Delusion

To JUSTINE DURANDT delusion is a means of escape from the real world. Her life as a world-famous film actress allows her to live in a coccoon, to shut out the truth and write the script for her own life’s melodrama. She commissions a ghost writer to write her memoirs wanting to present to the world the woman she is not. In and out of clinics, her dark side begins to take control of her actions and she engages proxies to eliminate her perceived enemies, ultimately leading to her own destruction when the identity of the only person who knew the true secret of her life is revealed.

GRIGOR SIDOROV is a young Russian fine artist who, after perestroika, works for the State in the restoration of Russia’s art and architectural treasures. Grigor deludes himself that he alone carries the burden of the loss of the family’s dignity, the blurring of their lineage back to the time of Tzar Peter the Great, and the dispossession of their wealth. In the Peterhof Palace in St Petersburg, the 18th C paintings by a famous Italian artist, Pietro Rotari, provide a compelling link with his family’s claims of descendancy. His co-worker, Lara, falls in love with him and realises that his mental stability depends on him owning the original paintings.