The Life and Tragedy of Tatiana Haikin
2024, 18 min

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In 2020, Tatiana Haikin, a Ukrainian immigrant living in Israel, was murdered by her partner. Her body remained unclaimed for days. The only remnants she left behind were handwritten recipes and an old photo album. Through conversations with friends and relatives in Israel and Ukraine, a portrait of Tatiana slowly takes shape, while her recipes are prepared one final time. The film reconstructs the memory of a woman who came close to disappearing without leaving a trace.

Docaviv Festival Special Selection (2024)
Miami Women Film Festival (2024)
Berlin Women Cinema Festival (2024)
Official Semi-Finalist, Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival (2024)
Outstanding Project Award, Co Pro Student Lab (2023)

On Making This Film
I created this short documentary as my graduation thesis project for the International MFA Program in Documentary Cinema at Tel Aviv University, in close collaboration with cinematographer Sigal Zegman, composer Jonathan Ataria, and editor Sveta Shelegovskaya.

In 2020, I came across a breaking news headline that read: A woman was murdered by her partner on her 50th birthday. She was childless and an immigrant from Ukraine. I found myself deeply moved by the starkness of these words.

The following day, I traveled to the neighborhood where she had lived. I spoke with neighbors and friends, who told me that no one had claimed her body, and that she had died without identification documents or citizenship. The more I learned, the more I found myself drawn to a woman whose life seemed to have disappeared without leaving a trace.

Over the course of two years, we traced her closest friends, relatives, and grieving family in Ukraine. Some spoke only Russian, so I began taking lessons in order to communicate with them directly.

One detail returned in every conversation: Tatiana was an exceptional cook. As a young woman in Lviv, she had studied culinary arts, and the only thing she left behind was a collection of handwritten recipes.

Those recipes became central to the film. Through long, repetitive gestures of cooking, we sought to reconstruct Tatiana’s presence while reflecting on the lives of women so often confined to domestic spaces.

Later, we learned that Tatiana had been murdered with utensils from her own kitchen.

After her death, Tatiana’s body was returned to her family in Ukraine through a crowdfunding campaign. Some of her remains are still missing to this day.

The film was broadcast on KAN 11, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, in 2024.

Stills from the film, by Sigal Zegman