Director’s Statement: Like birth, death is a physical encounter with the unknown that every person undergoes in their lifetime. But unlike birth, death is no unifier. The experience is ultimately a solitary one; no one can cross over to the other side with you. Instead of coming into the welcome embrace of the world of the living, one lets go of home, of loved ones, and of self to step into what comes next. Even if we have lived a full life, in death, we are alone.

Mila is an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, now living far from home and country in the United States. She lives close to her daughter and granddaughter, but not too close; their physical proximity belies the vast expanse between them. And like other former Soviet subjects, Mila lives beneath the specter of a lifetime of trauma — for her, the shearing of self occurred a long time ago. Her husband has died. Her daughter has her own life and her own family now. The one bright spot that Mila can still cling to is her only granddaughter, Elle.

I wanted to make this film about Mila’s last day alive because it offered an opportunity to explore the end of life in an unsentimental fashion; unclouded by family and final obligation, we see Mila explore the liminal spaces between our world and the next. The emotional terrain that she traverses is strange — filled with fear, emptiness, and futility. She has a nightmare about the grave and then wanders into a church in the morning out of desperation, to try to find some guidance and peace. She starts to ask God for more time, but stops herself — more time for what, exactly? At the end of life, there are no parades. Mila comes into acceptance when she realizes she is living in an imagined past more than in the present. She finds herself returning to a favorite tree in an orchard long ago razed for high-rises, a bite into a sun-warmed apple grown in a country that has ceased to exist. There is very little left for her in this life. Or was there ever? As they say, you cannot take it with you. There is only one foot in front of the other, the two hands that help us slide down into the grave.

Yet Mila’s life was not insignificant; none of ours are, really. She brought her daughter to the United States and thus changed the trajectory of her and Elle’s lives forever. And in this way, Mila’s life mattered much more than her death. Elle will always remember her strange grandmother and the sweet taste of her favorite apple cake. As an adult she will dip a slice of it into her coffee and think about her many relatives, mostly nameless and faceless to her now, and what they endured — the water they carried — so that she might live. — P.O.