Churikova’s last role was the wife of Secretary General Chernenko

On October 6 in Munich, the classic world cinema film director Werner Herzog will present his personal award The Werner Herzog Film Award to the film “Patient Number One” by Rezo Gigienishvili. It talks about the last days of the penultimate Secretary General of the USSR, Comrade Chernenko. Rezo Gigineishvili is known for the films “Hostages” and “Heat”, which in one way or another touched upon important moments in the history of the country

Werner Herzog is 81 years old. He directed more than 70 films – “Bad Lieutenant”, “Woyzeck”, “Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night”, “Grizzly Man”… – and is still working.

Herzog lives in Los Angeles, but was born in Bavaria, and has a Russian wife, Lena, a native of Yekaterinburg. They have been together for more than 30 years.

Herzog is immersed in Russian culture and knows the history of our country well. In 2018, his film “Meeting with Gorbachev” was released, filmed together with Andre Singer, which was shown at the Moscow International Film Festival.

“Patient Number One,” which he chose for the award among many paintings, is dedicated to the penultimate General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, the barely alive Konstantin Chernenko. He had the chance to lead the country for only a year and one month, from 1984 to 1985.

A seriously ill old man is in the Central Clinical Hospital under the supervision of doctors and people in civilian clothes. The country should not know that he is here and sick. In the last days of his life, a young nurse looks after him. Fragile Sasha bears a heavy burden of responsibility for the life of the country’s first person.

The role of Chernenko was played by Alexander Filippenko. His hero repeats the words that there is no time to rest, that he is still needed. “Power is only taken, it is never given,” he believes. Although it is difficult to understand that in such a state one can even think about anything.

Rezo Gigineishvili reproduced a real story when a polling station set was built right in the hospital to create the illusion that the country’s leader was active and definitely alive.

Chernenko’s wife was played by Inna Churikova. Her heroine moves in a wheelchair, so they bring her to her husband, who is also in a wheelchair. Chernenko barely recognizes his wife; they tell him that it is her. Churikova was heavily made up, so that she is unrecognizable at some moments. The wife calls Chernenko a boy, kisses his hands, and plays a recording with the voices of his children and grandchildren.

The role of nurse Sasha was played by Olga Makeeva, who starred in “Kept Women” and “Actresses.” The film also stars Igor Chernevich, Vladimir Steklov, Sergei Gilev, Valentin Samokhin.

Werner Herzog called Rezo Gigineishvili’s film a radical statement about the collapse of the political system as such, which does not allow the viewer to laugh or cry, since this is equally impossible. This determined the choice of the laureate. The film was filmed in Russia before Rezo returned to Georgia, from where he once came to Moscow. He is Mikhalkov’s former son-in-law, the father of his grandchildren. Apparently, they have completely different views on life.

The script was written by Boris Khlebnikov’s regular screenwriter Alexander Rodinov, whose name is associated with the films “Crazy Help”, “Free Swimming”, “Long Happy Life”, as well as “A Tale of Darkness”, “Rostov-Papa”, “Boomerang Hearts”, “ Dr. Richter.”

The idea came to Rezo during the quarantine, which he spent in his homeland. He re-read Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich when there were constant reports of hundreds of people dying. It reminded him of the days when he took care of his dying father.

Herzog gives out its Innovation Award every year. Its laureates were the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi with his film “Hero”, Natalya Efimkina, who lives in Germany, who shot the documentary “Garazhan” (that is the name of this film). Its heroes were the residents of the Kola Peninsula, spending their leisure time in their garages, where their own unique subculture had developed. The garage here is like a stronghold of freedom, where anything is possible. And freedom for Herzog is the most important thing, which explains his lack of a mobile phone. True, his wife has it, who is always nearby.

He learns about the world through travel. When he came to St. Petersburg in 2016, he advised students to go on foot from St. Petersburg to Madrid or Barcelona to explore the world, since such education is more powerful than university education. He himself visited the awakened volcano in Guadeloupe, among the Indians in the wilds, where he filmed “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” in caves, where he discovered cave paintings of an ancient man and filmed them in the film “Caves of Forgotten Dreams.”