Alena Lodkina is a Russian-born, Melbourne-based director, whose second feature Petrol has just premiered at Locarno and is now in the running for MIFF’s Bright Horizons prize.
Well, it appears to have an autobiographical element because of the obvious similarities between the character and me: both of us have a Russian background, and we have been film students. But in fact, it’s not autobiographical at all. It’s a very fictional story, set in a fictional world.
