Trinity mathematicians celebrate Venice success of unique film project DAU

Posted on: 22 September 2026

A film with an unusual connection to Trinity was among the major award winners at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.

The Silver Lion for Best Director is one of only eight official awards presented by the Venezia 83 jury to films in the festival’s main competition, alongside the Golden Lion for Best Film and the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize. This time, it went to Ilya Khrzhanovsky for DAU.

Professor Samson Shatashvili, Director of Trinity’s Hamilton Mathematics Institute, and Maria Shtilmark, of Trinity’s School of Mathematics, have both been involved with the DAU project over many years, and were in Venice as part of the DAU delegation for the film’s world premiere.

The origins of the unique DAU project go back almost two decades. Inspired by the life of Nobel Prize-winning Soviet physicist Lev Landau, Khrzhanovsky created an extraordinary, experimental environment in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in which participants lived and worked inside a meticulously reconstructed Soviet scientific institute.

Rather than relying only on actors to portray its scientists and intellectuals, DAU brought real mathematicians, theoretical physicists, scientists, artists and other figures into this world. Its scale was remarkable, from the physical spaces created to the huge cast of contributors involved over many years.

Professor Shatashvili was invited to participate in 2011.

“Ilya invited me to the Institute in Kharkiv as a mathematician and a theoretical physicist,” he said. “The unusual thing was that we were not actors pretending to be scientists. I was essentially playing myself inside the world that Ilya had created, although that world existed decades before I was actually there as the project recreated different periods of Soviet life from 1928 to 1968.

“I was filmed in episodes taking place in 1953, 1956 and the 1960s. A number of other mathematicians and theoretical physicists from around the world participated in the project in a similar way, including Nobel laureates and Fields Medallists.”

Photo by Olympia Orlova. Prof. Samson Shatashvili and Maria Shtilmark with Shing-Tung Yau, Fields Medallist, at the DAU Institute, 2011.

Maria Shtilmark became involved much more continuously in the production, initially working as assistant to the director on translation during the filming in Kharkiv. She subsequently worked for DAU's London office for almost two years during the project's lengthy post-production period.

In the new DAU film presented in competition in Venice, Shtilmark is credited as Director of Translation, while she also participated in the filmed world of the Institute and appears in the film.

The Trinity Mathematics connection continued after filming ended as Shatashvili and Shtilmark remained closely involved with Khrzhanovsky and the DAU team during its post-production years. 

In 2019, Shatashvili organised a scientific conference as part of DAU's large-scale public presentation in Paris, which took place across the Théâtre du Châtelet and Théâtre de la Ville, with events also held at the Centre Pompidou.

Both were also members of the DAU delegation at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2020. There, DAU. Natasha, another film emerging from the project, received the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for Jürgen Jürges's cinematography.

Photo courtesy of Phenomen Berlin. DAU at the Berlinale, 2020. Prof. Shatashvili and Maria Shtilmark are fourth and third from the right, at the back.

Six years later, Shatashvili and Shtilmark travelled with DAU to Venice for the premiere of Khrzhanovsky's new film.

“It was quite extraordinary for Maria and me to be there again, six years after Berlin and 15 years after I first entered the Institute in Kharkiv. DAU has been a remarkable part of our lives. 

“It was wonderful to see so many people from the team again, and after all the immense work Ilya has put into this project over so many years, seeing him receive the well-deserved Silver Lion was a very special and deeply touching moment for both of us.”

Photo by Victoriia Skytska. Maria Shtilmark with Radmila Shchogolieva, lead actress in DAU, in Venice.

DAU received strong critical attention during the festival, with particularly enthusiastic reviews in the Financial Times and The Guardian.

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