2018 | Fiction | 14 min. | Russia
The collapse of the USSR did not pass without bloodshed. In some republics, including Lithuania, there were clashes between the local civilians and the Soviet military. The drama takes place in a Soviet plane where. The stewardess is trying to save the board from the terrorist and at the same time to save her relationship with husband.
Directors Statement
As a debut, the script was consciously written by putting me, as an author and a director, in tight frames all the way round. I had to demonstrate two story lines in a closed space in less than 15 minutes. Now we live in times of affordable ‘beautiful’ cinema, when a stylish and ‘tasty’ image often prevails over the dramatic component of the plot. I’d like to put reliability and visual closeness above such beauty so that the viewer could not guess when the film was produced – today or thirty years ago. So, the era and a place of action – the destructive Soviet 90s – were chosen. The history was conceived as a story about a woman who, from a state of defeat, can find the strength to become a winner. Due to this, I had great doubts about the ‘terrorist component’ of the film script. I was afraid of that such a motive would be too strong and outweight. Therefore, we tried to make the threat almost non-realistic from the very beginning. A viewer should judge how it was managed for us. Surprisingly, the location scout was the main difficulty for me. Finding a suitable aircraft, and then agree on a permit for shooting the film within a limited budget was a real challenge. We spent nearly four months for it and even have already arrived for shooting in Kyiv, but we didn’t work there. So, we had to start from scratch in Moscow. The Il-62 aircraft was not only a filming location for us, but also our house for a short time; we had to “reanimate” it and take it to the air again, for the first time since 1983, though it was only on the screen. The film was shot in two shifts at a very fast pace with a minimum amount of rehearsals. And this is what I regret most of all. I’d like to have more possibilities to rehearse. One Master said: “If at least 30% of your original idea preserved in the film – it’s success”. Being not quite pleased with many pictures in the film, I hope we preserved 30%.
Director: Zurab Dzhidzhilava
Producer: Zurab Dzhidzhilava
Сast: Tatiana Timakova and Andrey Rogozhin
Studio: Zurab Dzhidzhilava
