Another View 2016 / Uchenik / Russia 2016
Schoolboy Veniamin is convinced that the world is stuck fast in a mire of lies and depravity and that he alone knows how to make things right. Armed with quotations from the Bible and an awareness of his role as the Chosen One, he sets out to discipline a humanity that has gone astray. Created by a distinguished theatre and film director, this Russian picture examining the birth of ideological extremism was shown at Cannes.
Schoolboy Veniamin has a strong feeling that the world is heading for destruction. Armed with quotations from the Bible and the unassailable conviction that he is the Chosen One, he sets out to correct at least those in his midst: his mother, his classmates and his teachers. His dogmatic behaviour gives some the pretext to vent their xenophobia; for others it’s a test of tolerance. Veniamin is prepared to use all available resources in the name of ideology. Thirty years after Vadim Abdrashitov’s Plumbum, or The Dangerous Game (Plyumbum, ili opasnaya igra, 1986), Kirill Serebrennikov has also come up with a film examining the seeds of belief-driven extremism, choosing to set the work in contemporary Russia, a country that craves a new ideology. The director previously created a successful stage production of the original story by German playwright and dramaturge Marius von Mayenburg. Screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, the film received the François Chalais Award as a work that best conveys the urgency of the present.
Kamila Dolotina
118 min / Color, DCP
Director Kirill Serebrennikov
/ Screenplay Kirill Serebrennikov podle stejnojmenné divadelní hry / based on a play of the same name by Marius von Mayenburg
/ Dir. of Photography Vladislav Opelyants
/ Music Ilya Demutsky
/ Editor Yury Karikh
/ Art Director Ekaterina Scheglova
/ Producer Ilya Stewart
/ Production Hype Film
/ Cast Petr Skvortsov, Victoria Isakova, Julia Aug
/ Sales WIDE
Kirill Serebrennikov (b. 1969, Rostov-on-Don, USSR) began directing for the stage while studying physics in Rostov-on-Don. His first Moscow production of Vassily Sigarev’s play Plasticine brought him international recognition. His television and theatre plays have won various awards. He has been artistic director of Moscow’s Gogol Center, a leading stage venue, since 2012. In his film debut Ragin (2004), which won KVIFF’s East of the West Competition in 2005, he was already examining the moral aspects of his heroes’ transformations. Playing the Victim (Izobrazhaya zhertvu, 2006), like his latest title The Student (2016), is based on his own stage production. The drama Yuri’s Day (Yuryev dyen, 2008), about an opera singer who bids farewell to her homeland, mysteriously loses her son in a remote village, and then finds out who she really is, won three awards at the Locarno IFF.
WIDE
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Ilya Stewart
Producer
Sitora Alieva
Festival Organizer
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