Iulia lives alone in Monaco since her father left, who returned to Russia due to sanctions against their country. She no longer attends school. She feels increasingly lonely and threatened.
Virgil Vernier shot Imperial Princess on the fly, in parallel to preparing his third feature film (alongside many other short, documentary, or hybrid formats). The film is framed as a springtime diary written by the protagonist, Iulia, a young Russian woman who has decided to stay in Monaco after her parents’ hasty departure, brought on by the fear of sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine. “Imperial Princess” could be the name of the yacht they narrowly managed to smuggle out to Dubai. It is also an apt name for a protagonist who claims not to need anyone, cooped up as she is in a gilded cage—or perhaps in a house of mirrors, filled with the hostile presences that lurk behind the one-way mirrors.(Cinéma du Réel)