Maryana Spivak

Maryana Spivak plays Irina, Sergey's former wife, in To the Lake. Irina does not conveniently forget their history because an epidemic has arrived. Spivak lets the resentment show without losing sight of the practical fear underneath it: she has a child to protect and limited reason to feel secure.

Spivak also starred in Andrey Zvyagintsev's film Loveless. Both parts call for an uncomfortable degree of emotional honesty rather than an insistence that the audience like the character. Her presence in To the Lake helps keep the group from becoming a tidy team of survivors. These people bring their existing relationships with them, however inconvenient those relationships become.