Filmmakers reproached for participating in the Mikhalkov festival

Due to the absence of Kinotavr, many Russian films have accumulated, which were waiting for their release. In addition, the road to major international festivals is closed to Russian cinema, and this has exacerbated the situation. This avalanche had to find a way out. That is why a new program appeared within the framework of the MIFF “Russian Premieres”, the participants of which, like all participants of the MIFF in general, are criticized by colleagues who are sure that it is immoral to have at least some relation to the festival, which is directed by Nikita Mikhalkov.

One of the paintings of the “Russian Premiers” – “A Similar Man” by Semyon Serzin – is a story about a man who does not exist. Sasha Ivanov was the most ordinary guy, nothing foreshadowed his voluntary departure from life, but he went to another dimension from the window of a high-rise building. There is another hero – a detective investigating a case who interrogates Sasha Ivanov’s colleagues, his neighbors, and an ex-girlfriend. It turns out that each of them has his own idea of ​​the deceased. It has been imprinted in the minds of people in different ways.

Semyon Serzin deliberately chose a black and white image. It’s like footage from a chronicle. They specifically found a camera that allows you to shoot only black and white films, so that there is no desire to switch to color. As it turned out in the course of communication with the film crew, this movie about death was shot “for three rubles.”

At the very beginning of the picture, in the news bulletin it will sound that a monument to Dovlatov’s beloved dog Glasha was opened in St. Petersburg. It turned out that the picture had an alternative ending, where the main character meets with a writer who has become the personification of Russian absurdity, but he was abandoned. Semyon Serzin himself played the main role, because in the course of work it became clear how difficult it is to find an artist, and even explain to him what is required of him. Semyon appealed to his favorite directors and films — Ilya Averbakh, Cold War by Pavel Pavlikovsky: “When I thought about the hero, I remembered the hero from Stalker,” he says. – We shot the entire film in St. Petersburg, where I have been living for 12 years, pretending that I live in Moscow. It is very difficult to shoot a feature film in 10 days. My hero is trying to figure himself out.” As in Serzin’s previous debut film, The Man from Podolsk, the script is based on Dmitry Danilov’s play, which Semyon had already staged in Pskov. Serzin is a theater director and actor, a student of the legendary St. Petersburg teacher Veniamin Filshtinsky, who directs the Invisible Theatre. He played the main role in Kirill Serebrennikov’s film “Petrovs in the flu.”

The main competition is attended by the lightest and most carefree at first glance film “Journey of Mastorna” by Chinese director and screenwriter Chan Ming Zhi Liao, entirely built on film associations. The authors of the film did not come to Moscow, they got in touch with journalists in Zoom. Behind the director hung a poster of Godard’s film Breathless, and next to it was a copy of the Palme d’Or. His picture is dedicated to the great world cinema, in particular Tarkovsky. It mentions Truffaut, Godard, Orson Welles, and in the title – Fellini’s film that was never made. “What my hero is talking about is me talking. I think, like him, I love Tarkovsky for the philosophical and avant-garde spirit, the mastery of editing, the humanistic principle. We are the children of cinema,” says Chan Ming Zhi Liao. He himself played an aspiring director who wanders around the old quarters of Shanghai along with a casual acquaintance, a student who came from Beijing to shoot a graduation project.

Old Shanghai is disappearing, but according to the filmmakers, this is not an urgent problem for the general population. So the film is not so airy, but important, according to the director, to raise this issue. For 40 days, the actors walked around Shanghai, but it only seems that this is a complete improvisation. Everything was filmed strictly according to the script. Art-house cinema in China, as in most countries of the world, is experiencing great difficulties at the box office, not in demand by the general public, aimed at action films. The authors of the film turned out to be real intellectuals, the Chinese elite. Their education made a big impression.

Boris Akopov presented the second film “Kat” after the debut “Bull” in “Russian Premieres” and seemed to bring us back to the dashing 90s again. The main character is associated with the intergirl Elena Yakovleva in the film of the same name by Pyotr Todorovsky. Her successor in a straight line passes through all circles of society, behind the scenes of the Bolshoi Theater, and before us is a slice of modern life – patrons, deputies, cops, prostitutes, pimps.

Boris Akopov has a ballet past, and this one was not in vain. “I devoted 14 years to the ballet profession,” he says. – I was taken to different theaters. I went to work in the Kremlin, started in the Kremlin ballet. I not only made my characters from the ballet world deliberately grotesque, as some people think, but, on the contrary, slightly embellished. Interest in the criminal theme is due to my interests in cinema – I love films where life and death are intertwined. I myself am almost from this environment. It seems to everyone that a ballet dancer is a bohemian. And I’m from Balashikha, and many of my friends turned into a bad path. I continue to communicate with those of them who are still alive. I thought that our film might not get a rental certificate at all, and I became my own censor, cut out some scenes.

The lead actress Anastasia Kuvshinova played a representative of an ancient profession who raises a small child. It is not clear who his father is – either a popular singer, or a pimp performed by Dmitry Kartashov, quite a pleasant character, even sensitive. It is strange that he chose such a profession. “I like incomprehensible endings,” says Boris Akopov. “The heroine will choose freedom or it will be a road to nowhere, I don’t even know for sure myself.”

Anastasia Kuvshinova was born in Divnogorsk, lived until the age of 18 in Krasnoyarsk, immediately entered VGIK, prefers auteur cinema, managed to star in Igor Voloshin. She boldly declares that she doesn’t really like Akopov’s “Bull”, and the “Kat” script immediately interested her. “Like Chichikov in Dead Souls, my heroine moves from character to character, from man to man. I love negative roles,” says the young and self-confident actress. And she was inspired by the French actress Anna Karina, she loves the film “Breathless” by Godard. Boris Akopov on the site tried to bring her down from heaven to earth – you have to “bull”, play a chav.

On the last day of competitive screenings, the Yakut director Dmitry Davydov presented his new film “Youth”. His previous film “Illegal” about a migrant from Central Asia, whom fate brought to Yakutia, was supposed to be shown at the Moscow International Film Festival, which was postponed due to the start of a special operation. Now, with Molodist, Dmitry continues the theme of the stranger, dramatically changing the genre of a dramatic thriller to a comedy. Forty-year-old Vasily (Yakut actor Albert Alekseev), who has been missing for twenty years, falls like snow on his head when no one is waiting for him. He served in Khabarovsk, settled in the city, never visited his parents. And now everyone is dead. There were classmates left, his ex-girlfriend, who has a son and a completely different life. Another classmate’s wife is about to give birth to her sixth child. And in general, everything is fine with him – the house, the household.

The views of the snow-covered village are reminiscent of paintings. We see people through windows, as through frames. Dmitry Davydov starred in advertising screensavers that constantly interrupt the film. He advertises snowdrop tincture, other rubbish, and this adds madness to what is happening, like the phantasmagoric dance of the saleswoman of the village shop “Kolos”. The hero can leave, the abyss. No one will stop and save him.

“Youth” is the name of a musical group, to which local residents dance at a disco on the occasion of some anniversary. This scene, as well as the inclusion of other musical inserts, recalled the signature style of the Finnish classic Aki Kaurismäki. Dmitry Davydov filmed in 56-degree frost in his native Amginsky ulus, where, probably, every second of his actors. There he himself continues to live, although he radically changed his fate, becoming a professional director, leaving the profession of a school teacher.