"My name is Milka Assaf. Milka is a Slavic name and the Assafs are an ancient Lebanese family, so my name is quite a destiny in itself. As someone who had a Russian grandmother, a Bulgarian mother and a Lebanese father, was schooled by Jesuits in Beirut, emigrated at the age of 19 and took French nationality, I am naturally drawn toward stories that interweave characters from different cultures in a baroque environment. L'Ombre des cèdres, a screenplay about the Lebanese tragedy, was my first attempt. Now, in Les Migrations de Vladimir, I have pushed this interweaving to its ultimate climax, where a person actually steps into the body of another. People often urge each other to 'put yourself in his shoes,' meaning to get a better understanding of somebody. I took the expression literally and made a comedy out of it. Les Migrations de Vladimir is a story about swapping souls, migrating between bodies, switching destinies. Two symbolic destinies: Victor Lalumière is a French game show host who will stop at nothing to become a media star, while Vladimir is a romantic young Russian layabout pursued by mobsters from his homeland, who is desperate to save his skin. Why did I make him a Russian? Because, apart from the fact that I know what it's like for a people to be flung into chaos, I've had the Slavic soul inside me since the day I was born." (Milka Assaf, Director)