Horizons - Awarded Films 2001 / La noce / France, Russia 2000
Tanya, an attractive woman tired of playing the role of girlfriend to an older wealthy man and sick of her modelling career in Moscow, returns to Lipka, her hometown. And maybe it’s not just caprice that leads her to ask a onetime schoolmate and admirer, Misha Krapivin, to marry her. He, like all the local men, works at a tapped-out mine and struggles with a chronic lack of money. Though shocked by the unexpected situation, relatives and neighbours nevertheless decide to throw the young couple a proper wedding. By a stroke of luck the mine finally hands over several months’ back pay to the workers. And when the wedding takes place it becomes a inexhaustible source of surprising, comic, even bizarre situations which reflect not only the rather abject misery of provincial life, but also the elemental invincibility and unfathomability of the Russian character. Inhabitants of the mining town of Lipka (near Tula) filled in as extras and were a significant reason why the actors together won the Best Acting Company Award for the director at Cannes last year.
114 min / Black & white, 35 mm
Director Pavel Loungine
/ Screenplay Pavel Loungine, Alexandre Galine
/ Dir. of Photography Alexandre Burov
/ Music Vladimir Chekassine
/ Editor Sophie Brunet
/ Producer Catherine Dussart
/ Production CDP
/ Cast Marat Bašarov, Marija Mironova, Marija Golubkina, Andrej Panin, Natalja Kaljakanova, Vladimir Kašpur, Ilja Rutberg
Pavel Lounguine (b. 1949) graduated in mathematics and applied linguistics from university in Moscow (1971) and then from the Higher Courses for Screenwriters (1980). After his debut Taxi-blues (1990), he shot Luna Park (1992) and several documentaries: Gulag. Secret of Happiness (1992), Ilegal Pioneer (1993), Nice. The Little Russia (1993), The Eskimos. Unnecessary People (1994), Sea of All Russians (1995) – one of seven films included in the Concerning Nice. Continuation international project. The feature film Ligne de vie (1996) followed. He then made a film for French television, Vladimir Mayakovsky (1998) and one for the Discovery Channel in the US entitled The Big Game (1998). The majority of his movies were shot under French co-production and Lounguine has lived in France for over ten years.
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