INTERVIEW: Masha Sokolova on the Not-So-Wonderful World of Oz
**This article originally appeared in our April 2026 print issue**
A still from The Patchwork Girl
“That’s why I wanted to enter the horror genre. Monsters can be made as these symbolic problems in our society.”
We’re all pretty familiar with the wonderful world of Oz created by L. Frank Baum. There’s The Cowardly Lion and his quest for some courage. The Tin Man is a squeaky dude looking for a heart and the Scarecrow wants a brain (I’ve always been confused about how he’s able to talk without a brain. Like, I get this is happening in a fantasy world and all, but, seriously?).
The real Oz-heads (that’s a thing, right?) probably know all about The Patchwork Girl of Oz, Scraps, but for the uninitiated (me!) she’s a life-sized doll stitched together from patchwork that’s been brought to life.
Masha Sokolova, director of the upcoming short-film, The Patchwork Girl, was a member of the uninitiated; she’d never heard of Scraps either.
Her friend Sebastian Benavidez, credited as a writer on the film, suggested that Sokolova look into The Wizard of Oz franchise for inspiration on her upcoming horror project. Like all works published pre-1923, the world of Oz has entered the public domain (you can thank public domain laws for the 2023 “masterpiece” Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey) and storytellers are free to mine those pages for inspiration without securing rights to the properties.
Sokolova was immediately taken with the “creepy, clown-like doll” on the cover and thought Scraps would make a great horror movie monster.
“The Patchwork Girl in the book stands for being different,” Sokolova explained. “She’s this quirky, chaotic thing in Oz that’s very different from all the munchkins that she’s around.
“That’s why I wanted to enter the horror genre. Monsters can be made as these symbolic problems in our society.”
In Sokolova’s film, The Patchwork Girl would be made to represent the absurd beauty standards that feel they have to embody from social media, something she’s struggled with herself.
With this metaphorical representation of the monster in place, she had an easy in toward modernizing the story, but she sought to inject it with additional touchstones from the cultural zeitgeist.
While writing the script, Sokolova noticed her TikTok feed being inundated with Vtubers, online entertainers that hide behind computer generated avatars and voice modulators. As she dove deeper into the subculture, she read stories about Vtubers performing concerts and the fans who believed they were in relationships with the anime characters on screen.
“I read stories about people trying to break in backstage and meet the people controlling the avatars,” Sololova said. “[The performers] are real people but they’re hidden behind a mask and online persona. [The fans] are also hidden and then The Patchwork Girl, the monster, that’s the reality they eventually have to face.”
A still from The Patchwork Girl
Sokolova, a Los Angeles based filmmaker, wanted to set the film in a suburban location because of the additional layers of meaning that such a setting might evoke.
“If you’re a teenager living in a small town, there aren’t many opportunities to travel,” Sokolova said. “So instead these kids go online and that isolates them even more. They’re in both an online bubble and the bubble of their town.”
Additionally, Baum grew up in the suburbs, outside of Syracuse. While Sokolova plans to shoot the feature length in Baum’s hometown, Chittenango, for this proof-of-concept short film, she found and fell in love with Saratoga Springs.
While attending the Coney Island Film Festival in 2024, Sokolova met Saratoga-based producer Spencer Sherry and explained her plans to shoot The Patchwork Girl in Upstate New York. Sherry loved the idea and told her to keep in touch when she was ready to begin production.
Sokolova secured a budget after a bit of good fortune on the game show Let’s Make a Deal. She won an all-inclusive vacation to Aruba and a bunch of appliances that wouldn’t fit in her apartment.
“My friends thought I was in a Ponzi scheme,” Sokolova said regarding her incessant posting on Instagram and Facebook Marketplace. She told them, “I’m under an NDA; I can’t tell you why I have all of these appliances.”
By selling off the appliances and half of her vacation, she was able to raise $8,000 to cover the cost of production and marketing. The only thing she couldn’t sell was a gift card to CB2, the upscale Crate & Barrel. She plans to use it to fund a purchase for the set decoration on the eventual feature-length.
With funding in place, she reconnected with Sherry and the two of them prepared to begin production in Saratoga.
Sokolova’s first hire was Lakota Ruby-Eck, a cinematographer and 518 Film Network board member. With all of his local connections, Ruby-Eck built out the entire crew for the production.
Sherry took care of location scouting based on Sokolova’s online sleuthing and one of the first places they found was The Patchwork Girl’s lair — the antique store, Stitches and Time, located on Route 29 on the way out to Schuylerville.
“It was just so perfect,” Sokolova exclaimed. “Everything was already there - the whole atmosphere. All we had to do was light it correctly.”
A still from The Patchwork Girl
With production completed, Sokolova and her team are ready to take the short film on the festival circuit. While they haven't yet found a home for their world premiere, the goal is to generate some interest and funding to shoot the feature-length version of the story.
“I’m already in talks with the principal members of the crew, like Spencer and Lakota, about shooting the [feature-length] version,” Sokolova said. “I’m planning a two year festival run for the short-film and hopefully the feature will be in production by June 2027.”
To follow along with The Patchwork Girl and see how their story continues, check out their website patchworkgirlfilm.com. Links to their IMDb, Instagram, and TikTok are all available on the website.