Director Balagov, who lives in Los Angeles, scared fans with a statement about his retirement from cinema

Director Kantemir Balagov is 31 years old. He has achieved what others can only dream of. Two of his films received awards at the Cannes Film Festival, were shown around the world, and received many prizes. He received a grand offer from the HBO channel, which he eventually turned down. Now Cantemir surprised by the announcement of his retirement from the cinema.

In social networks, he wrote in Russian and English: “I’m all over. Two films are more than enough.” After that, I deleted my account. As I once did with my other account, but without desperate statements. Apparently, tired of the flow of hatred for any reason. Not to him, but in general. Although they did not stand on ceremony with him either. If you read what people write, faith in your own strength will disappear. His classmate Alexandra Sokurova at the Kabardino-Balkarian University and also a laureate of the Cannes Film Festival Kira Kovalenko then deleted her account. Her film Unclenching Fists won the Un Certain Regard Grand Prix at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Kira and Cantemir are a couple who live together in Los Angeles, and before that they were in Canada, where Cantemir worked on the HBO project The Last of Us based on the computer game of the same name.

Something went wrong with the producer, creative differences arose, and Kantemir left the game in the fall of 2022. In 2023, the series was released, but Balagov’s name is not mentioned in it, although according to some information, some of the scenes he shot did go there. It is possible, perhaps, to explain the unexpected breakdown of the young director. A crisis happens to any creative person, and even more so, to those who are away from their parents, close people, familiar environment.

Alexander Sokurov in an interview suggested that this behavior of his student may be due to internal problems, difficulties that arose in the process of film production, because in the West there are no such greenhouse conditions as Kantemir had in Russia.

Starting work on the HBO pilot project, Balagov said that the next film would be shot in Kabardino-Balkaria, and it would be about the lives of young people like himself. In March 2021, it was announced that he was co-authoring writer and Big Book Award winner Maria Stepnova on a script with the working title “Monika”. Cantemir then said: “After reading the novel The Women of Lazarus, I realized that I really want to work with Marina. Each subsequent book of hers only increased my desire. I was struck by her word, the characters of her characters and the emotions that I experienced. This is a story about father and son, about what a son is capable of, trying to make his father more than he is.

Maria Stepnova, in turn, commented on the beginning of the joint work: “It is an amazing and joyful experience for me to come up with a story step by step, together with such a big and complex director. Cantemir is surprisingly tactful, knows how to insist on his own so that the screenwriter does not want to hang himself. We argue a lot and laugh a lot, although the story we tell is quite sad. The heroes became for us not just alive – family.

And in October 2022, it became known that Kantemir started filming his first English-language film Butterfly jam about the relationship between father and son, who moved from Kabardino-Balkaria to New Jersey. This is the same “Monica”, which was supposed to be filmed in Nalchik.

Soon, the French edition of Le Mond published an article about Kantemir and Kira Kovalenko, where they were called hostages of the unknown. There, in particular, it was reported that Kira is learning English, which will allow her to adapt to new conditions, and this takes time. The general mood was somehow disturbing, it was felt that the young directors were confused, they were going through difficult times.

Both of them are from Nalchik. Kantemir was studying accounting at the Stavropol University when he learned that Alexander Sokurov was recruiting a director’s workshop at the Kabardino-Balkarian University, and returned home and entered. . Sokurov became the artistic director of his debut film “Tightness”, which was filmed in Nalchik and St. Petersburg. It is about the events of 1998, the abduction of a son from a Jewish family living in Kabardino-Balkaria. In 2017, the film participated in the Un Certain Regard competition at the 70th Cannes Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI award there.

Then in Cannes, Cantemir gave almost his first interview to MK, in which he said: “It was important for me to show interethnic relations, which often become a source of conflict. The name “Tightness” has several meanings. Inside a person it is so crowded that there is not enough space for loved ones. Everything is full of itself. And several nations can be crowded in one territory. There is a closeness of internal traditions and mentality. In the North Caucasus, Kabardians or Balkars were not stolen. Who needs problems with the indigenous population? And the Jewish diaspora is not so protected. Abductions in the 90s happened often, they stole for the purpose of subsequent ransom. Many people are shocked by the cassette I used, but I was counting on it, I wanted to more accurately determine the context of time. When we were teenagers, these cassettes, where people are tortured and killed, went from hand to hand.”

At the Open Russian Film Festival, receiving an award for his debut, Kantemir said: “I wanted to tell the Russian audience what the North Caucasus is. If someone has thoughts that I am against Russia, then this is not so. Tradition must be internal, not external. If it prevails over humanity, then it is very dangerous.”

In 2018, Cantemir was already a jury member of the Un Certain Regard program at Cannes, and this is fantastic for a young director who made one picture. A year later, there was the world premiere of his second film “Dylda” in the same “Un Certain Regard”. It is about front-line girlfriends, their life in post-war Leningrad. The film was awarded for the best director and the FIPRESCI award with the wording: “For the incredible aesthetics of film language and the unique story of post-war trauma.” In 2019, it was shortlisted for the Oscars and had its American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival and its Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. There was a theatrical release in the USA. “Dylda” received three awards from the Asia-Pacific Film Academy in Brisbane, Australia – for the screenplay (Kantemir Balagov and Alexander Terekhov) and camera work (Ksenia Sereda). And the lead actress Victoria Miroshnichenko was nominated for the European Film Academy Prize in 2019. Like “Closeness”, “Dylda” was filmed with private money without state support.

I would not want the career of a talented director to end on takeoff. He will make his own choice, of course. Quentin Tarantino, for example, also set himself a limit: ten paintings and that’s it. He turned 60, and he is currently filming his last film. It’s called Film Critic. Everyone believes that he will change his mind and shoot more than one film.