In the follow-up to her acclaimed debut STRANGE COLOURS, Alena Lodkina creates an enigmatic, wholly original magical coming-of-age story that doubles up as an existential mystery. Spectacle is thrilled to host Lodkina for a one-night only presentation of PETROL, followed by a discussion with the filmmaker.

While working on a deeply personal school project connected to her Russian heritage, an impressionable film student named Eva meets the a mercurial performance artist named Mia who quickly takes hold of her imagination.  As Eva moves in with Mia and their lives grow more and more entwined, Eva sets off on a surreal journey of awakening, haunted by dreams, fantasies and ghosts. Starring the exciting new talents Nathalie Morris and Hannah Lynch, set in contemporary Melbourne, PETROL is the story of a haunted friendship between two young women, and the discovery of the world and self through a strange bond.

“(PETROL) delivers wry, pinpoint satire about the cultural realms that it inhabits… As the action advances, Lodkina sees Eva leaving behind the monumental but remote ideals of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Beethoven for an experiential idealism of travel, nature, exploration, and even fun. She winds the exquisite artistic and practical ironies of such exertions and discoveries into the substance of the film. Its ambiguities and its quizzical open-endedness is an open door to the cinematic future; I hope that it gets a regular commercial release, and I’m impatient for whatever Lodkina will do next.” – Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Filmmaking is a kind of wizardry in PETROL. Lodkina uses the basic tools of montage and sound design to conjure spells, spook and hypnotize her characters, and summon impossible visions. Beyond its own form, the film contains a whole inventory of sorcery. It places ghosts, tea leaves, and Ouija alongside psychiatry, biology, and quantum physics as equally valid yet incomplete methods for making sense of the world.” – Julia Gunnison, Screen Slate

“Alternately whimsical and unsettling, PETROL is an entirely original vision, a film of moods as fluctuating as the weather, and a magical coming-of-age story that is also perhaps the tale of a haunting.” – New Directors New Films 2023