Dau. Katya Tanya !new! May 2026

DAU. Katya Tanya is a 2020 drama film that is part of the massive and controversial DAU project directed by Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Jekaterina Oertel. Plot Summary

Themes

• Reality vs. Performance: DAU’s design forces participants to live within constructed reality; Katya and Tanya must reckon with authenticity.
• Power & Surveillance: Institutional control and observation shape behavior, revealing compromises people accept.
• Memory & Identity: Prolonged immersion destabilizes memory, leading to identity shifts and re-evaluation of personal narratives.
• Ethics of Experimentation: The project raises questions about consent, exploitation, and artistic responsibility.
• Female Solidarity & Tension: Katya and Tanya’s relationship explores mutual support, rivalry, and resilience under systemic strain.

The "DAU" project is famous for its method acting—actors lived as their characters for years in a recreated Soviet city. In Katya Tanya, you feel every second of that confinement. The apartment becomes a pressure cooker. Katya, denied an outlet for her intellect, turns her analytical fury inward onto the only person left in her orbit: Tanya. DAU. Katya Tanya

Katya, often perceived as the more pragmatic and grounded of the pair, exists within the institute’s ecosystem as both a caretaker and a prisoner of its logic. She navigates the absurdities of Soviet scientific life with a weary, bureaucratic resignation. Tanya, in contrast, embodies raw, unfiltered emotion—jealousy, desire, and a desperate need for connection. Their interactions are rarely sentimental. Instead, they circle each other like magnets with reversed polarity: sometimes drawn together by shared isolation, more often repelled by the inherent competitiveness that the patriarchal, surveillance-state environment forces upon women. Reality vs

Methodology:

Verdict: A Necessary Evil?

DAU. Katya Tanya is not a film you enjoy. It is a film you survive. As a piece of cinema, it is impeccably crafted. The sound design is claustrophobic—every creak of the floorboard, every rustle of a nylon shirt feels like a threat. The performances are so raw they feel illegal. As a meditation on how authoritarianism seeps into the bedroom, it is frighteningly effective. The game between Katya and Tanya is a perfect metaphor for a society where citizens are forced to play degrading roles just to survive until tomorrow. The "DAU" project is famous for its method

In one devastating scene, Katya laughs while crying—a genuine somatic response to humiliation. Tanya, in character, calls her a "good little pig." Off-screen, one can imagine Khrzhanovsky smiling at the "truth" of the moment. But whose truth? The truth of Stalinism? Or the truth of a director wielding unchecked authority?