^{Credit: The Three Sisters (Polydont Films)}

When The Three Sisters was listed among fifteen animated shorts in the running for Oscar consideration, few recognized the name of its director, Timur Kognov. The only online traces of Timur Kognov were his IMDb page, which had no credits other than The Three Sisters, and a profile on FilmFreeway, claiming he was from Tbilisi, Georgia. As it turned out, that profile was fake, and so was the name Timur Kognov. The real artist behind The Three Sisters is Konstantin Bronzit, who was already a two-time Oscar nominee for 2007’s Lavatory – Lovestory and 2014’s We Can't Live Without Cosmos. Bronzit soon became a three-time Oscar nominee, with The Three Sisters making the final lineup.

Bronzit’s decision to submit The Three Sisters to festivals using a pseudonym is certainly a fascinating story, especially given how far his film has come. At the same time, it has largely dominated the press surrounding The Three Sisters. When I spoke to Bronzit, I couldn’t resist asking him a few more questions about Timur Kognov. Yet, I was more interested in Konstantin Bronzit, how The Three Sisters reflects his past work, and the craft behind the film that scored it an Oscar nomination.

^{Credit: Konstantin Bronzit}

Q: You submitted The Three Sisters to festivals and the Oscars under a pseudonym: Timur Kognov from Cyprus. Timur Kognov was even listed on IMDb for a period. It wasn't until after The Three Sisters made the Oscar shortlist that you revealed his true identity. Did any viewers deduce that you directed the short based on its style and tone?

KB: I’ll say it again: the short made the rounds under my pseudonym only at international festivals, which, for the Oscar selection process, is the trickiest part since there are so many films in contention and competition is incredibly fierce. That’s precisely the stage where I took my chances. After I had already crossed Dante’s inferno, so to speak, I submitted the film to the Academy under my real name. As far as being recognized, there was a funny moment. Right after I finished the animatic for the film, a few friends who were in on the full story said, “Konstantin, you’re naïve if you think you can hide when your hand and style are so clearly visible!” At the time, I was basically kidding myself, because deep down I knew that my friends were right. Style is what you can’t hide: the rhythm, the chamber feel with a single location, the austere editing… the lonely house on top of a hill… It so happened, I’m told, that one festival viewer, a student, gave this feedback: “I get the feeling that Konstantin Bronzit had something to do with this film.” This sent a shiver up my spine. But then I thought, what an attentive student! Well done! We’ll never know how many other such students there were, though.

Q: The Three Sisters won a prize at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, qualifying it for Oscar consideration. That festival’s shorts programmer is Natalie Gee. How did she react upon realizing you directed the short? 

KB: That’s a great question! The Santa Barbara festival was the first one where I “showed my hand” after winning a prize there. They were delighted when I told them the whole story! I’ve quoted their reaction previously: “What an exciting twist, Konstantin, and what an interesting journey you and your film have been on this time around. Thank you for letting our festival be a part of it.” Literally just a few days ago, Natalie wrote to say how glad she was to see my nomination and how things had come together. You know how this all started? Early last year, in 2025, when I had already abandoned hope of making it through the “festival barrier,” I unexpectedly got a message from Natalie, in which she wrote to Timur Kognov (my pseudonym) that she would like to select his film for Santa Barbara. I had been on the verge of writing the project off entirely, and wrote back honestly, saying that I was very surprised since nobody had been selecting the film. Her answer was, “How could that be? That’s ridiculous!” Natalie saw that my film wasn’t so bad and included it in the competition. And now we see that her opinion coincided with that of the hundreds of Academy members who voted for the film. That’s how the decision of just one person can drastically influence a film’s fate! And all this just goes to show again how arbitrary and strange things can be in artistic competition.

Q: Was anyone else in on this secret? I assume the folks at Polydont Films, the Israel-based studio that worked on the film, were. 

KB: They were, naturally. Cinema is a collective art. Besides the recognizability of my style, there was another tricky aspect that I was warned about: “Konstantin, if so many people already know that you’re making this film, soon word will get out to everyone!” Here, I had no counterarguments. The odds of the information getting out were 99%. But all I could do was trust in people’s integrity. I made the right choice – nobody on the team, which included people in very different parts of the globe, made a peep. So trust your friends and colleagues!
 
Q: Based on your experience, how do you think animation festivals judge established filmmakers vs. newcomers? 

KB: I already touched on this in the interview with Cartoon Brew, and I don’t want to repeat myself. It must be said that at a festival, we are evaluating not filmmakers, but their films. Yet names have a magic of their own. A question: say you have ten tapes in front of you, nine of which are from directors you’ve never heard of and the tenth is a new film by Quentin Tarantino (or Miyazaki, if you prefer). Which of these tapes will you watch first? I’m not comparing myself to Tarantino here. He’s way out of my league. The point is something else entirely. The point is that most people who love movies will start by watching Tarantino.

Q: Dmitry Visotsky is given an “idea by” credit. How did the project evolve from Visotsky’s idea to the finished film?

KB: Another of Dmitry’s ideas was at the core of my Lavatory – Lovestory. But the catch is the chasm that exists between an idea and the finished script. We can’t even imagine how many good ideas out there never turned into films. The idea for The Three Sisters sounded simple: Three sisters are living in harmony until one day a man appears on the scene. Whereupon passion and competition take over as each tries to outwit the others. (Dmitry said that he had observed a situation like this in real life with relatives of his.) Just a few words, but I immediately felt both the dramatic and comic potential of the situation. But a situation is not a script. That’s where the hard part starts: fleshing this out into a full story. The script is what’s happening on screen, every second. It is a series of events, each of which should prepare us for the next. And coming up with all this for me personally took about two or three years of my life. At this point, I can’t say exactly how long. Incidentally, the same thing happened with Lavatory – this idea of a woman working in a lavatory, where someone leaves a bouquet of flowers in the coin jar, upturning her quiet life and forcing her to “investigate” – with this idea bouncing around in my head for a year until at last, one night, it transformed into a finished storyboard. Then a lengthy production process starts. Each of my shorts takes me about four to five years. I have always warned young would-be filmmakers upfront that animation is a form of creativity with a particularly low output-to-effort ratio.

^{Credit: The Three Sisters (Polydont Films)}

Q: The Three Sisters restricts its action to a small island with three dwellings, which we don’t venture into. What do you think is the key to making the most of a limited environment? 

KB: The key you’re talking about is the foundational concept of mise en scène. I had superb teachers, who taught me that if your mise en scène is balanced in terms of composition and the characters’ actions, the viewer won’t pay attention to the rest and won’t care how many settings, cuts, and other visual gimmicks you throw in. In my old film, At the Ends of the Earth, there isn’t a single editing cut. Everything takes place in a single, eight-minute-long shot. But the viewer doesn’t notice this at all. The story is what imbues the mise en scène with meaning. The story is what the viewer is after. This is what I was trying to do in The Three Sisters.

Q: This is your third Oscar nomination, your previous two nominations being for Lavatory – Lovestory and We Can't Live Without Cosmos. The latter’s sequel, He Can't Live Without Cosmos, also made the Oscar shortlist in 2019. If The Three Sisters wins, you’d be the second Russian filmmaker to win in this category. The first was Aleksandr Petrov for The Old Man and the Sea. What do you think an Oscar for The Three Sisters would mean to other Russian animators at studios like Melnitsa, which produced Lavatory and Cosmos? 

KB: I’m here thinking how paradoxical this situation is, when we have a big country with a big history of animation and some truly great names. Just take Yuri Norstein, for one. Or Aleksandr Petrov… But it so happens that to date, we don’t have a single Oscar for animation. Not really. What I add here every time, by way of explanation, is that Petrov’s Oscar formally belongs to Canada, because The Old Man and the Sea was a Canada–Japan production. Russia was not involved in the film. But yes, Aleksandr (like me) is a Russian director, and his Oscar is a great professional triumph for him personally. What our hypothetical victory would mean for animators in our country, I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. But I’m sure that there will be little boys and girls who, just like I once did, will look up in awe at this great world of big movies, gain faith in their own capabilities, and make a step towards the impossible… Someone surely will be inspired to. 

Others then will track your living trail,
Retracing step by step your feet,
But you must inevitably fail
To tell your triumph from defeat.

(From To Be Famous... by Boris Pasternak, translated by Albert C. Todd)

^{Credit: The Three Sisters (Polydont Films)}

Q: Isolation and companionship seem to be recurring themes in your films. Lavatory – Lovestory centers on a woman looking for her secret admirer. We Can’t Live Without Cosmos centers on a cosmonaut longing for his friend. The Three Sisters revolves around sibling rivalry, as the titular sisters feud over the sexiest/only man on the island. Did you notice a common thread between these three projects? 

KB: You are a very attentive viewer. It makes me happy that you see all these connections so clearly. Because they really are there. It was just recently that I realized all my works are permeated by an unending, existential feeling of loneliness. I don’t know where it comes from or why it captivates me. Just take the image of a lonely house on a hill, which is found in a film of mine for the third time now. The door to a house pouring out warm light is, I think, the most important thing that every person should have. Because truly, behind that door is everything that a person needs to be happy.

The Three Sisters can currently be streamed on The Animation Showcase and will be playing in select theaters with this year's other Best Animated Short nominees starting February 20, 2026.

Nick Spake is the Author of Bright & Shiny: A History of Animation at Award Shows Volumes 1, 2, and 3. Available Now!