One Man Dies a Million Times / Film School Radio interview with Director Jessica Oreck

One Man Dies a Million Times chronicles the story of two young botanists as they fall in love as the world wages war around them. A record-breaking, desperate winter sets in and the city slowly, painfully, begins to starve to death. Savagery transplants civility. Maksim and Alyssa defend the seed bank and its priceless collection of edible specimens from the starving masses of the city, the enemy, hordes of rats, and each other. Alyssa (Alyssa Lozovskaya) and Maksim (Maksim Blinov) both work at the Institute of Plant Genetic Resources in the center of the city. The Institute houses the world's first seed bank—an irreplaceable trove of living genetic diversity which holds the potential both to preserve and transform modern agriculture. Part documentary, part legend, One Man Dies a Million Times is the true story of the seed bank and the botanists who worked there throughout the Siege of Leningrad (1941–1944). Though the characters portrayed in this film actually lived, and the events they experienced actually happened, this is not a reenactment. Director Jessica Oreck (Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga) and cinematographer Sean Price Williams (Good Time, Her Smell, Frownland) artfully transplant their narrative from 1940’s Leningrad to a science fiction-inflected modern day. For updates and screenings go to: myriapodproductions.com/oneman