Scales is a short autofiction film blending personal video archives, performed scenes, and experimental sound into a road trip.
Vivid landscapes of California, framed through the aesthetics of American 90s B-movies, echo spaces from the protagonist’s childhood in Ukraine. Through a fragmented, non-linear narrative, the film follows a heroine carried by waves of traumatic repetition, in which pleasure emerges not as escape but as a transformative experience — reclaiming the gaze in never-ending subjectification.
Content warning: brief nudity
CREW:
Director: Anna Scherbyna
Cinematographer: Denys Voloshyn, Georgio D’Ausilio, Mitia Churikov, Anna Scherbyna
Editor: Anna Scherbyna
Sound: Uliana Bychenkova
Awards
e-flux Film Award (honorable mention), 2025
Director
Anna Scherbyna
Anna Scherbyna is a Berlin-based artist and filmmaker. She was born in Zaporizhzhia, studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv, and completed her postgraduate studies in Expanded Cinema at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig.
With a background in painting, she integrates a painterly optic into her filmmaking. Her work engages with trauma, dreams, and violence, frequently employing the subconscious as a site of inquiry and resistance. She explores how subjectivity is shaped and destabilised by both intimate and systemic forces. Embracing disruption and fragmentation, her filmic practice challenges hegemonic narratives while mapping the affective residue of historical and personal rupture onto the screen. Selected Filmography
Scales (2024), Sisters (2019) 
