Sergey Alarsky

Director of

The Lost Lily

A complete interview with Sergey

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the director Sergey for taking the time to answer our questions.

Whole team of Liverpool Indie Awards is wishing you the very best in all your future projects. We hope to see more of your exceptional work in the years to come. Thank you once again!

The Lost Lily is a surreal short about guilt, faith, and self-deception. It follows a man who believes he is saving his love, while the truth suggests he may be harming her. I was inspired by characters who are morally convinced yet internally fractured, and by films where horror comes from the human psyche rather than external forces.

I was deeply saddened by Lynch’s passing last year, and I wanted to express my respect for him, as well as for other surrealists of the past. At the same time, I did not want to imitate anyone directly. I wanted to reconnect with that feeling of quiet, unsettling mystery that first made me fall in love with cinema. 
 
My goal was to create an intimate, claustrophobic psychological chamber piece. The tone is restrained and tense, grounded yet slightly dreamlike. We relied on controlled lighting, minimal locations, and subtle camera work to reflect the protagonist’s inner instability and gradually blur the line between reality and perception.

Coming from 20 years in gamedev as a director and producer, I chose to take on many roles in my debut film to gain practical experience. Beyond writing and directing, I handled producing, organizing the shoot, editing, sound etc. We filmed in three days and completed the project in about three months from idea to final cut. I was lucky to work with a strong cinematographer and committed actors. In the future, I will definitely delegate more and build a stronger production structure, but this experience was both a real challenge and invaluable for me as a filmmaker.

Because I took on so many responsibilities myself, the shoot demanded a great deal of physical and emotional energy. As it was my first film, the lack of experience also created significant stress throughout the process. What helped me overcome this was the support of a few reliable people around me. My eldest son was on set and assisted me, along with several trusted collaborators. I believe the film was completed successfully in no small part thanks to their support and commitment.

I am especially proud of the dense and mysterious atmosphere we were able to create. For me, the film feels like a meditation, a full immersion into someone’s inner world. That quiet, immersive tension is something I value more than any single dramatic moment.

I wanted to tell this story without dialogue, in the spirit of early cinema, to challenge myself to communicate purely through visual language. It turned out to be an extremely difficult task. Looking back, I would probably adjust the presentation to make certain elements clearer and more accessible to the audience, while still preserving the atmosphere and ambiguity.

I am definitely proud that I made The Lost Lily. I put a great deal of sincerity and personal emotion into it, which was not easy, as I understand that not everything in it will be immediately clear or comfortable for every viewer. At the same time, that honesty is exactly why it stands out to me. I financed the film myself, which gave me complete creative freedom. I am aware that in projects funded by others, I may not always be able to take such risks in form and presentation. That makes this film especially important in my creative journey.
 

I believe it is essential to stay honest and not try to please everyone. Cinema is a language through which we share our inner energy. No matter how polished the film is, the audience will always sense the author behind it. Viewers cannot truly be deceived. They feel whether something is sincere or calculated. In the end, everything depends on your inner substance and the depth of what you genuinely want to express.

For me, the connection and mutual understanding between director and actor are essential. Actors are not tools in the director’s hands, but true co-authors of the film. It is crucial to be on the same page before stepping onto the set. Under stress, any lack of alignment becomes visible immediately and can quickly destabilize the process. Trust and shared intention are what hold everything together.
 
I handled most of the sound design and ambient layers myself, sourcing material from Freesound and then modifying and adapting it for the film. My background in gamedev helped a lot in shaping and layering audio atmospheres. The most difficult part was finding the original source for the vinyl recording featured in the film. I searched extensively through online archives from that period but could not find anything similar. Eventually, the author of the original recording contacted me directly and confirmed that everything was legally clear.
 
The final score was composed by my regular collaborator. I believe he captured the emotional tone of the film very precisely.

Initially, the film had no text inserts at all. Based on a feedback I added act titles later, but that still was not enough to connect the narrative clearly. Eventually, I replaced them with internal lines from the protagonist, which I now feel work much better. I also reworked the edit several times based on a team and colleagues feedback, including removing certain moments that I was personally attached to. That was difficult, but necessary. The final version differs significantly from the first cut, and in my opinion, it is stronger precisely because of that feedback.