Watching the movie “Oscar”

On May 9, Rossiya TV channel will show the feature film The First Oscar by Sergei Mokritsky.

… At the end of November 1941, Joseph Stalin summoned the chairman of cinematography to his office and said: “We are going to strike the Germans with a tremendous blow. I think that they will not stand it and will roll back … We should shoot all this on film and make a good film. Two directors were chosen to carry out the task: Leonid Varlamov and Ilya Kopalin. This is true history.

Eight decades later, this story became the starting point of the film “The First Oscar”, created by director Sergei Mokritsky. He devoted his picture to the creation of the documentary The Defeat of German Troops near Moscow, which was awarded the Oscar in 1943. That year, a Soviet film received an Oscar for the first time in the history of our country.

The central roles in the “First Oscar” were played by Tikhon Zhiznevsky, Anton Momot and Daria Zhovner.

The tape takes viewers back to 1941. Young and zealous students Lev Alperin (Anton Momot) and Ivan Maisky (Tikhon Zhiznevsky) compete for the title of the best operator on the course of the institute. The competition of twenty-year-old future filmmakers is fueled by the attention of the first beauty of the acting department of the institute Yuna (Daria Zhovner).

But when an evacuation is announced in Moscow, the trinity decides to go to the front. Yuna becomes a member of the front-line concert brigade, and Ivan and Lev try on the burden of military cameramen. And although the rivalry continues, the horrors of a real war are changing young people, making fundamental adjustments to their views on creativity. It is they who manage to make the very shots that will then fly around the whole world.

– The film “The First Oscar”, – says director Sergei Mokritsky, – a film about love for a woman and for a profession. The work of a cameraman during the fighting is extremely inappropriate. War and creativity are two different poles of human activity. But then, after the war, it turns out that it is the work of chroniclers that is very important. How painful it was for them to decide what was the truth about the war! What is this truth – the ranks of marching soldiers or the tears of nurses and mothers? And it is through their eyes that we see history today.

Actor Tikhon Zhiznevsky has always been wary of films about the Great Patriotic War.

“And after reading the script for the First Oscar, I immediately agreed,” says the artist. – I was fascinated both by the history of the creation of this documentary film and by the little-known fact about the award of the Oscar to the Soviet film. Preparing for filming, I watched newsreels, chronicles, read about how cameramen worked. How much they filmed and how much they did not film, because they stood and cried, looking at the dead fighters. And then they reproached themselves for it.

Anton Momot was attracted to the project, first of all, by the theme.

– I didn’t know anything about the history of the creation of the film “The Defeat of German Troops near Moscow,” says Anton Momot, – I only knew that there were military cameramen. It’s a resistance role that I never had. My character is a young man from a Jewish family. At the beginning of the film, it is closed and closed. Inside – a strong man, outwardly – very weak. On the set we were taught how to handle the camera, what should be the sequence of actions. But the main difficulty for me was in the character. Because he doesn’t look like me at all. And I really hope that I managed to show a real person, with his fate and pain.

Daria Zhovner, who played the role of the beautiful Yuna, also faced the “resistance of the material.”

– In the script, my heroine, – says the actress, was written out as an egoist, a kind of profurset of the forties. She sincerely loves only herself and has no doubt that all the best in life is destined for her, that she deserves it, and the whole world was created to admire her. But the war makes her grow up… This is a film about what people with cameras in their hands can do for the world no less than people armed to the teeth.

Elena Bulova.

Frames from the film provided by the press service of the film