How Larisa Sadilova started the train on the opposite track

Spectators of the 44th Moscow International Film Festival saw the film “Garden” by Larisa Sadilova as part of the Main Competition.

The story of Ogorod is the story of middle-aged women living far from the capital and fighting every day for a decent existence. One of them was lucky – against all odds, she allowed herself love.

– The script for “Garden”, – says director Larisa Sadilova, – was written aiming at Valentina Telichkina and Yuri Kutafin. I have known Yuri since 2015, when we were filming in Kursk, and he participated in the Rural Screenings project, where artists travel around the country with a film mover and show films. I liked Yuri as a person and as an actor. When I wrote other scripts, I always remembered him, and when the idea of ​​the film “The Kitchen Garden” came up, I realized that it should be written specifically for him. If there had been a famous actor in his place, the picture would not have succeeded. The same thing happened with Valentina Ivanovna Telichkina. But with Olga Lapshina – just lucky that it happened. We started shooting the picture in 2020, but due to the pandemic, we stopped and resumed shooting in 2021. Initially, another well-known actress was supposed to play (according to MP – Raisa Ryazanova. – Ed.), but it didn’t work out according to the shooting schedule, and Olga Lapshina suddenly had a free schedule for our shooting days. And it’s a miracle! But for the role of Prokhor Nervov, who also worked on the film as an executive producer, we first looked for people from the outside, but then we realized that we had to take our own, otherwise we would not line up on schedule. So Prokhor became an actor. I am very pleased with this choice.

For Olga Lapshina, Larisa’s proposal was both unexpected and significant. After all, it was she who was asked to replace a respected and famous actress on the screen. She understood that she should not let us down, play no worse, but better. And the partnership with Valentina Telichkina, whom she admired since the time of the film “The Beginning”, was a real gift.

“Since Leviathan,” actress Olga Lapshina told a funny detail of her life, “I began to plant a “movie garden” in the country. I call different cultures by the names of films where I have already starred or where I have been approved. For films to bear fruit. And then I was offered the whole film “Garden”, and I realized that this was fate.

The film became a turning point in the biography of another person – producer Prokhor Nervov, who, quite unexpectedly for himself and with the light hand of Larisa Sadilova, turned out to be on the other side of the camera.

“There are directors,” says Prokhor Nervov, “who are favored by everything and who succeed in everything. Everything about this picture was good. Starting from the choice of the filming location to the people with whom we contacted, and up to the weather conditions. For example, for the film, we needed to run an electric train on the opposite track, and after long negotiations with Russian Railways, we managed to do it. We were given a separate train with a special person who built the route, and the film crew traveled in it. And as for the weather: we were very lucky here. For example, we needed snow, we were filming in the outback of the Smolensk region, and when we went out to choose locations, everything was perfectly covered with snow. But as soon as we arrived at the shooting, everything started to flow there. And the night before it was necessary to shoot nature, it snowed heavily, and we even ordered a tractor to clear the technical paths for the group.

This is what it is – a Russian movie about true love.

Elena Bulova.

On the picture: film director “Garden” Larisa Sadilova.

Photos provided by the press service of the festival