In this episode, Asha Dahya interviews Katia Badalian - a multi-talented Russian-American visual artist who directed the short film we’re featuring this month titled ‘Heroines’. 

Ten year-old nina is at the home of her neighbor Regina, Waiting for her mother to pick her up. Regina is a coarse-talking woman, dressed in a sexy outfit while chain-smoking in her kitchen, and perhaps emboldened by Nina’s unresponsiveness, takes the opportunity to give Nina the good old’ sex talk - well her version of it! At first, given Nina’s silence as she listens, we assume as the audience that she doesn’t comprehend some of the details Regina is describing. But a twist at the end makes the viewer see, in a shocking way, that she understands more than we realize. 

‘Heroines’ has just wrapped up a successful 2 year festival run, where it received a lot of peer recognition and acclaim, as Katia shares in our chat. 

Shot in only 2 locations over 8 minutes, relying on sound design and carefully designed visuals to be a key part of the story, ‘Heroines’ is a very different type of sex education film, but one that underscores the need for more dialog to disrupt damaging narratives we are seeing around America today. 

This was such a rich, dynamic and inspiring conversation, and we're thrilled to be sharing it with you all! 

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If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!