Short Film by HSE Film Institute Graduates and Students Featured in Short Film Catalogue at 2026 Cannes Film Festival
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The short film Funeral House Life, produced as a graduation project at the HSE Film Institute, has been included in the Short Film Corner catalogue of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. This black comedy by HSE graduates was the only entirely Russian-produced project selected for this year’s programme.
Filming took place in Moscow in April 2025, including at one of HSE University’s campuses and the Vorontsovo Estate. The premiere screening was held on April 10, 2026 as part of the 33rd Saint Anna Open Festival of Student and Debut Films at the Engineering Building of the Tretyakov Gallery.
The film follows Fedor, who, in order to repay a criminal boss, joins his grandmother’s funeral business and transforms funerals into vivid and unconventional ceremonies. His growing popularity soon attracts competition from her former husband.
Arina Seyfullina
The story is an attempt to address subjects that are rarely openly discussed, explained director Arina Seyfullina, graduate of the Film Production Master’s programme at the HSE Film Institute. ‘Loss takes many forms, and we all experience it differently, yet we are often constrained by ritualised processes. I want to show that there is another way. Rather than shutting down and blocking out life’s processes, we can face and live through them. We can find a reason to smile in this darkness, to be grateful, and to celebrate life,’ she said.
Ksenia Soboleva
‘Death used to frighten me until, at the age of 16, I read Remarque’s The Black Obelisk. That book became my inoculation against fear, and this is precisely the effect we would like to have on audiences,’ said Ksenia Soboleva, screenwriter, creator, creative producer, and graduate of the Film Production Master’s programme at the HSE Film Institute.
Sofya Pyak
‘Working on Funeral House Life was an extraordinary experience for me. Shooting a black comedy is always a challenge, as it requires a delicate sense of the boundary between humour and absurdity. The fact that the project is now being presented in Cannes only proves that at the Film Institute we are learning to create high-quality, vibrant, and internationally competitive cinema. I am immensely proud of our entire team and of our ability to tell this story on an international stage,’ concluded Sofya Pyak, student of the Drama and Film Acting programme at the HSE Film Institute.
The concept behind the short film Funeral House Life has also formed the basis for a television series of the same name: Arina Seyfullina and Ksenia Soboleva have already completed the script and episode-by-episode synopsis.
Project Team
Director: Arina Seyfullina
Screenwriter and Creator: Ksenia Soboleva
Executive Producer: Arina Mikhina
Creative Producers: Ksenia Soboleva, Natela Khordzakhia
Director of Photography: Kirill Karaman
Production Designer: Alexey Doktorov
Composer: Evgeny Borodin
Cast: Denis Kotov, Anna Potebnya, Olga Berezhnaya, Stepan Petrukhin, Alexey Larionov, Ekaterina Finevich, Evgeny Kolyadintsev (Senior Lecturer at the HSE Film Institute), Sofia Kopytova and Sofya Pyak (students of the Drama and Film Acting Programme at the HSE Film Institute)
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