Russia's Answer to Titanic Opens Cannes Film Festival
May 13, 1999 - 0:0
CANNES, France The Cannes Film Festival, the world's paramount film event, was to open yesterday with The Barber of Siberia, Russia's answer to the U.S. megabuster Titanic, kicking off the fest. The three-hour epic by award-winning director Nikita Mikhalkov broke box office records in Russia when it opened in February, outstripping the sailaway success of Titanic. The movie is a tragic love story set during the peaceful reign of Czar Alexander III, a cameo role taken by Mikhalkov himself.
This is not a nostalgic movie, it's a film about what Russia should be like, Mikhalkov told AFP on the eve of the festival. It's a movie turned to the future. While the film, ten years in the making, is not his longest undertaking, Mikhalkov said it was nonetheless a mammoth project to pull off. We were filming for 188 days in various countries, we had 170,000 meters of film reel to go through, 5,000 actors and 3,500 costumes, he said.
I never filmed a movie as big and that required so much energy. Mikhalkov began actively working on the film in 1995 after his movie Burnt by the Sun won the Oscar for best foreign film and the 1994 Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. Though the project was initially budgeted for 26 million dollars, costs quickly soared and the final bill for the Franco-Russian production came out to 45 million dollars, making it the most expensive movie ever made in Russia. It opened in Russia to huge audiences, taking in 500,000 dollars in less than two months.
Mikhalkov attributes the success to a desire by ordinary Russians to see films that portray their country in a positive light. He said he hoped The Barber of Siberia will give impetus to the Russian film industry and revive local interest in movie-making. If I manage as head of the Russian Union of Filmmakers to equip each city nationwide with a movie theater, with a decent sound system and chairs, then I would have been successful in my position, he said.
The charismatic director said he declined to submit his latest movie for competition at Cannes as he was no longer interested in reliving the anxiousness and disappointment he experienced when Burnt by the Sun and Dark Eyes, shown at the 1986 festival, failed to win the top Golden Palm Award. I'm too old for this now, the 53-year-old director said with a wink.
I'm beyond that stage. It's not about being snobbish or jealous, he adds. I know what this movie represents, what it's all about, and the only approval I need is that of the public. How does he plan to top The Barber of Seville? I don't know what my immediate plans are but I would like to make a film about the Russian writer Alexander Griboyedov or one inspired by Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull', he said.
(AFP)
This is not a nostalgic movie, it's a film about what Russia should be like, Mikhalkov told AFP on the eve of the festival. It's a movie turned to the future. While the film, ten years in the making, is not his longest undertaking, Mikhalkov said it was nonetheless a mammoth project to pull off. We were filming for 188 days in various countries, we had 170,000 meters of film reel to go through, 5,000 actors and 3,500 costumes, he said.
I never filmed a movie as big and that required so much energy. Mikhalkov began actively working on the film in 1995 after his movie Burnt by the Sun won the Oscar for best foreign film and the 1994 Grand Jury Prize at Cannes. Though the project was initially budgeted for 26 million dollars, costs quickly soared and the final bill for the Franco-Russian production came out to 45 million dollars, making it the most expensive movie ever made in Russia. It opened in Russia to huge audiences, taking in 500,000 dollars in less than two months.
Mikhalkov attributes the success to a desire by ordinary Russians to see films that portray their country in a positive light. He said he hoped The Barber of Siberia will give impetus to the Russian film industry and revive local interest in movie-making. If I manage as head of the Russian Union of Filmmakers to equip each city nationwide with a movie theater, with a decent sound system and chairs, then I would have been successful in my position, he said.
The charismatic director said he declined to submit his latest movie for competition at Cannes as he was no longer interested in reliving the anxiousness and disappointment he experienced when Burnt by the Sun and Dark Eyes, shown at the 1986 festival, failed to win the top Golden Palm Award. I'm too old for this now, the 53-year-old director said with a wink.
I'm beyond that stage. It's not about being snobbish or jealous, he adds. I know what this movie represents, what it's all about, and the only approval I need is that of the public. How does he plan to top The Barber of Seville? I don't know what my immediate plans are but I would like to make a film about the Russian writer Alexander Griboyedov or one inspired by Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull', he said.
(AFP)