Review of the film “Anna Asti. Path of the Phoenix”

In 2022, the Ukrainian singer Anna Asti released the song “In the Bars” – the first hit of an all-Russian scale, which thundered after Western major labels and a number of top artists and producers left Russia. In the summer of 2022, Anna Asti released her album “Phoenix”, and she actually became number one among Russian-speaking pop singers. The story of Anna Asti was a tasty morsel for documentarians, but Igor Gavrilov believes that in the film “Anna Asti.,” which was just released on the KION platform. The Path of the Phoenix” was never told.

Anna Asti (real name – Dziuba) was born in the city of Cherkassy, ​​received a law degree and worked part-time as a makeup artist. In the early 2010s, at the invitation of producer Artem Umrikhin, she joined the Kyiv project Artik & Asti, and in 2013 the young hitmakers moved to Moscow. Artik & Asti were an example of Ukrainian musical expansion, that bright period when almost all high-quality pop music in Russia was made by immigrants from Ukraine. The culmination of this period in the life of Artik & Asti was the hit “Sad Dance,” released in 2019 by the Russian branch of the major Warner.

In November 2021, the duo broke up, and Anna Asti soon began a solo career under the wing of the Russian branch of Universal Music. And in March 2022, Universal, like all the majors, left Russia. However, already in April, Anna’s single “Hobby”, joint with Philip Kirkorov, was released, and the summer began with the megahit “In the Bars”. The singer did not return to her homeland. In the fall of 2023, the singer opened her own record label and received a Russian passport.

The film about Anna Asti is called “Anna Asti. The Path of the Phoenix,” but the narrative begins as if from the middle of this path. In the film there is no word “Ukraine”, Artem Umrikhin and the song “Sad Dance” are not mentioned, and even nothing is really said about the artist’s family and childhood. Asti’s parents had a band in their youth, but they did not achieve success in the musical field, and his father eventually became a businessman in the catering industry, and his mother taught cutting and sewing courses. But the film’s authors are not interested in the common plot device “success despite family.” There is no end-to-end intrigue in it at all. Some “big concert” looms in the distance, but I don’t want to sympathize with the singer, because the result is clear in advance.

The film’s authors’ favorite image is the Phoenix rising from the ashes. The viewer must guess for himself that the catastrophe after which Asti had to start all over again was the collapse of Artik & Asti. But maybe it’s actually about something else. For example, about Universal Music leaving the market and the singer losing a serious contract. Or, God forbid, about an armed conflict between her homeland and the country where she sings songs and runs a beauty salon. How to live with this? How to sing after this? They don’t talk about it. After all, all around are professionals, led by her beloved, fashionably cut husband, who has taken control of Asti’s career.

Yes, the life of an artist is not easy, Anna complains of sore joints and a damaged meniscus. But the overall feeling of the film is that she doesn’t touch the ground at all. This is especially felt in the estate of Philip Kirkorov. His mansion is practically a showbiz paradise, and in his new image with tanned skin and bleached hair, he resembles an enlightened Dennis Rodman. “Do you realize that you are number one today?” – says the king of pop to Anna, and she melts with emotion along with the audience.

In its game series, the KION platform has learned to draw very realistic portraits of our contemporaries, remember “Kidney” or “Mutual Consent”. But in the story about the new pop star, the platform avoided all the rough edges, limiting itself to shots like Anna Asti buying shawarma from a street stall.

The performer’s managers claim on camera that “tickets are not sold out so quickly for anyone in our country.” And according to the logic of the film, all this is the result of the singer’s hard work, her work on herself with the support of the team. True, last year, when Anna changed her image and became a fatal blonde diva, there was a lot of talk about the fact that she had filled the niche of her compatriot Loboda in the market. But the maximum criticism that Asti is ready to respond to is reproaches for the “tearfulness” of the songs. The authors of the film do not touch on more toxic topics.

Perhaps someday filmmakers will try to seriously ask this question: how did the Ukrainian singers make their choice, who until February 24, 2022 successfully and for a long time exported their talent and their beauty to Russia? Why did Svetlana Loboda, Vera Brezhneva and Luna leave the local market, while Ani Lorak, Yolka, Taisiya Povaliy and Anna Asti continued to work here? Today, such a formulation of the question is definitely not part of the plans of Russian documentary filmmakers.