Tenth mentorship session focused on treatment structure. Three acts, six interview subjects, timeline spanning one year in migrant authors’ lives.
Treatment reached eight pages now. Lydia insists: documenting creative process matters as much as finished product. This documentary isn’t just about migration literature. It’s about the act of creating it in real time.
We discussed interview subject selection carefully. Need diversity of backgrounds, genres, career stages. Established author alongside debut writer. Poet alongside novelist. Ukrainian, Russian, Polish voices. Different displacement trajectories.
Lydia wants to capture rejection and failure alongside success. Publishing industry’s structural barriers for migrant writers. Language gatekeeping. Cultural authenticity demands. Market expectations about what “immigrant story” should contain.
I’m simultaneously interview subject and research consultant. Strange dual role but useful. My five novels plus industry experience provide both case study and analytical framework.
We mapped timeline. January pre-production. February location scouting and interview subject confirmation. March-May filming. June-July editing. August pilot screening at Pushkin House.
Treatment includes budget estimates now. Equipment, editing, venue rental. Lydia’s applying for Arts Council funding. Documentary becoming concrete rather than conceptual.
Three years of conversations leading to this. From casual coffee to formal documentary project. Feels significant to document migrant writing community while participating in it.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
