The Moscow Film Festival is classified as a festival of the A category and ranks among such large film forums as the Berlin, the Venice and Cannes festivals. It has been recently attended by such stars as Jack Nicolson, Sean Penn, Isabelle Adjani, Fanny Ardant, Meryl Streep, and others.
The director of the feature, Dmitry Meskhiyev, was born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in 1963, to a cinema-related family. His father, Dmitry Meskhiyev, famous cameraman, worked in one of the best films of Russian cinematography The Lady with the Dog (1960) based on Anton Chekhov's eponymous story. Meskhiyev junior was in the cinematographic world. In 1988, he graduated from the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (the class of Marlen Khutsiyev). Since the early 1990s, he shot ten pictures and also directed music videos, adverts, TV programmes and concerts.
However, his latest film, Us, brought him into real prominence, despite the worries whether the foreign members of the jury would be able to understand and appreciate such a truly Russian film. The action takes place during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). Three Soviet servicemen flee from German captivity to a remote village Bliny where the father (Bogdan Stupka) of one of them lives. The old man appointed senior in charge of the village harboured them in his house.
The Kultura weekly, very popular among the Russian intelligentsia, published an interview with the director in its latest issue, where he talks about his work over the film. Meskhiyev said he had never been interested in the war issue. "Before the 1990s, many films had been devoted to the war, so I was interested in other topics," he said. But after he read the script, he could not get it out of his head. "Directly or indirectly, the war affected everyone in our country," the director said, which is why everyone in Russia will understand this film.
Some say that Us can soon become one of the favourites of Russian spectators, such as White Sun of the Desert and Seventeen Moments of Spring, as it is a very candid film. "The film is about war and a village during the war, so everything had to be authentic," Meskhiyev said. "Our actresses had to learn how to milk cows and do other things about the house - for this, they lived in a village for a month before the shooting," the director said. In his opinion, the film about war should only consist of action and fire exchange, it should certainly be a psychological drama. The director sought psychological tension changing and completing the script together with the scriptwriter Valentin Chernykh. The director attaches serious importance to the camera work. According to him, to create the desired mood, the film was shot in gloomy weather only avoiding bright light. The director continued that the shooting took place in autumn in a forest when it always rained. However, the film crew stoically went through all the hardships caused by the weather. And it was not in vain - the jury of the Moscow Film Festival has already appreciated the film, and now it is the turn of spectators.
Dmitry Meskhiyev himself looks into the present and future of the Russian film industry with optimism. He is certain that "our cinematography is obviously on the rise." Moreover, he thinks that the Russian film industry does not need to compete with the West, but it is more important to make serious popular films of good quality. And people will undoubtedly go to see them.
