Filming a movie is also a kind of journey.

Director Igor Voloshin is making a film about the Russian traveler Fyodor Konyukhov. The film will be called “Lord of the Wind.” The main role in the film will be played by Fedor Bondarchuk.

In the center of the plot is the famous journey that Fyodor Konyukhov made in 2016. Then the world, with bated breath, followed the movement of the traveler through the air. Konyukhov circled the globe in eleven days, before him no one had been able to do this.

One gets the feeling that Konyukhov has been going to this air travel all his life. Over the years of wandering, he made more than fifty expeditions, half of which had no analogues in the world. Fifteen times he crossed the Atlantic Ocean. And he was the only one who managed to swim across the Pacific Ocean in a rowboat. Konyukhov was the first to conquer all five poles of the planet, took by storm the seven highest mountain peaks of the world. In addition, he is the only Orthodox priest who has climbed Everest twice.

Fedor Konyukhov was ordained to the rank on December 19, 2010, the day of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, by Bishop Joseph of Zaporozhye and Melitopol. Not everyone knows that the great Russian traveler Fyodor Konyukhov is an archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church.

But back to the movie. Ten thousand meters under the heel … Crossing a storm front, many extreme situations in which the balloon drifted towards the Antarctic … He survived the night when the temperature outside dropped to -44 degrees, which seriously threatened the functioning of the iced burners. The traveler was extremely worried about the icing of the ball itself, which increased the weight of the aircraft by several tons. Konyukhov survived a downpour that flooded the ball’s gondola, literally falling on him after the ice melted when the ball descended to a height of 7000 meters. It went through a cyclone that was moving towards Australia at 40,000 per hour, with downdrafts where the balloon could simply be sucked in and dumped into the sea.

But the most dramatic on this path was probably the situation with the thunderstorm front. None of the solutions then gave a way out and did not give hope for life, the traveler was carried directly to the thunderclouds. Saving Konyukhov on earth was no longer possible. He was told that he needed to climb 12,000 meters, which was impossible, although, having heated up to red, all the burners worked – the ball did not want to rise above 10,500 meters.

“I felt,” Fyodor Konyukhov said after the expedition, “that I might not return from this mess.

He reported this to the ground (among the people who were at that moment in the headquarters was the son of Konyukhov – approx. author).

— Flashing lightning – it was all like hell. I didn’t see real hell, but these burning lightnings around … I think that in that world it will look the same as it was with what I encountered here due to my sins, – the traveler recalled.

Only a miracle could save him. Everyone at the headquarters froze, their eyes were riveted on a small dot on the screen, slowly moving over the Indian Ocean – a point of inaccessibility, which, according to Konyukhov’s son, “was at the mercy of the elements and the wind.”

“And a miracle happened,” says Fyodor Konyukhov, “a small gap of sunshine suddenly appeared between two thunderclouds. I entered it and fell into a narrow strip of clear sky, walked along it. The front was left behind, I began to move away from him, hearing how the thunder was getting quieter.

But the silence that followed was no less frightening. The ball was rapidly moving not to the east, as planned according to the plan, but to Antarctica, to the south. The temperature outside was dropping.

“I looked down,” Fedor Konyukhov said, “and at first I saw the raging ocean, then icebergs, ice, and everything was transmitted to me from the ground: “Pull, pull.” The cold front passed through me, I could not fly around it. I needed to stay awake to keep the orb functioning.

Sea voyages taught Fyodor Filippovich not to sleep for days. During the crossing of the Pacific Ocean on a rowboat, he slept fitfully for six months, two hours a day. I learned this from the ancient Athos monks. With his right hand, Konyukhov worked with the device, and in his left hand he held an ordinary metal key by the ring and swung it. Under the key, at the traveler’s feet, an overturned plate lay on the floor. Sometimes it was necessary to fall asleep at least not for a few seconds – the body simply could not stand it. This was then enough for several hours. He fell asleep, and when the key fell out of his hand and fell on the plate with a ringing sound, the traveler fell down.

After the landing of the balloon, when asked how he managed to avoid dangers, the priest answered: “Nicholas the Wonderworker…” Icons of St. Nicholas were constantly with him, wherever he went. And in gratitude for his miraculous salvation, the traveler everywhere builds chapels and temples dedicated to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker.

The producers of the picture about the traveler are Fyodor Bondarchuk, Mikhail Vrubel, Alexander Andryushchenko and Denis Baglai.

“In the modern world, it seems that all the roads have already been traveled and mapped, and a trip somewhere by plane or train turns into an everyday event,” notes Fyodor Bondarchuk, the lead actor. “The more interesting it is to explore the fate of a person who returned to this action the spirit of pioneering and the feeling of a real miracle. It’s an honor to play such a character and interact with him in preparation for filming.

Fedor Konyukhov himself believes that the goal of any person is to know himself and the world.

“How exactly to do this, everyone decides for himself,” he says. “Traveling is my way of life, a way to get to know our planet, myself, others, to expand the limits of a person’s ideas about what he can do. Shooting a movie is also a kind of journey, and any journey is the result of a long and careful preparation. It will be very interesting to see how our film will turn out.

Elena Bulova.

Photo from the website of the Valaam Monastery