At a wake for the murder of Russian journalist and activist Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead in 2006 in the elevator of her apartment block in Moscow, French writer Emmanuel Carrère spotted a familiar silhouette. Though born Eduard Veniaminovich Savenko, by the mid-2000s “Limonov” had lived a dozen lives. A poet, editor, and politician who’d recently finished a two-year stint in prison on terrorism chargers, Limonov was a man who embodied all the contradictions of the 20th century, a greater-than-life iconoclast and extremist whose existence had unraveled as a tumultuous cavalcade of U-turns, aliases, literary aspirations. and political intrigue. He’d been a factory worker in the Ussr; an exile, hobo, butler, and budding novelist in New York; a successful author in Paris; and finally, by the time Carrère came across him, a Bolshevik nostalgist who’d been a vocal supporter of Serbian expansionism during the 1990s Balkan Wars (here...
- 5/21/2024
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
Wild at Heart: Serebrennikov Oversimplifies Odyssey of Soviet Dissident
If one were to dilute a Molotov cocktail enough to make its destructive capabilities null and void, it would be the equivalent of Kirill Serbrennikov’s Limonov: The Ballad, an ersatz biopic about infamous Soviet poet/war criminal/refugee/dissident Eduard Limonov, who died in 2020 following complications from cancer related surgery, purportedly. Based on Emanuel Carrere’s unique and incredibly researched 2011 publication, Serebrennikov (himself an infamous pariah in his native Russia who was subjected to an erroneous trial and forced to serve eighteen months under house arrest) presents a treatment which cuts so many corners it might as well have been directed for a Hollywood studio by an American who has little interest in defining the shifting world politics which assisted in crafting Limonov’s contradictory personality.…...
If one were to dilute a Molotov cocktail enough to make its destructive capabilities null and void, it would be the equivalent of Kirill Serbrennikov’s Limonov: The Ballad, an ersatz biopic about infamous Soviet poet/war criminal/refugee/dissident Eduard Limonov, who died in 2020 following complications from cancer related surgery, purportedly. Based on Emanuel Carrere’s unique and incredibly researched 2011 publication, Serebrennikov (himself an infamous pariah in his native Russia who was subjected to an erroneous trial and forced to serve eighteen months under house arrest) presents a treatment which cuts so many corners it might as well have been directed for a Hollywood studio by an American who has little interest in defining the shifting world politics which assisted in crafting Limonov’s contradictory personality.…...
- 5/21/2024
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Dissident Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov has backed the ongoing demonstrations in Georgia at a press conference for his Cannes competition entry, Limonov: The Ballad, saying of the situation, “It’s absolutely awful.”
The streets of Georgia are lined with young protestors urging their country to join the European Union (EU), and against a law that is expected to demonise many civil society groups as ‘foreign agents’. The law is similar to one introduced in Russia, and is seen as a marker of Russia’s influence in the country.
On Tuesday (May 14), politicians passed a controversial law which requires non-governmental organisations...
The streets of Georgia are lined with young protestors urging their country to join the European Union (EU), and against a law that is expected to demonise many civil society groups as ‘foreign agents’. The law is similar to one introduced in Russia, and is seen as a marker of Russia’s influence in the country.
On Tuesday (May 14), politicians passed a controversial law which requires non-governmental organisations...
- 5/20/2024
- ScreenDaily
Cannes – Eduard Limonov was a complicated man. He was a poet, a novelist, and a political activist; at one point, a Russian dissident who lived in New York and Paris; he returned to his homeland to lead a fascist party that supported a return to an ideology closer to that of the former Soviet Union. His story is so expansive it could likely be chronicled in a 10-hour mini-series and still miss out on an outlandish or surprising period in his life.
Continue reading ‘Limonov. The Ballad’: Ben Whishaw Channels The Controversial Punk Russian Poet [Cannes] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Limonov. The Ballad’: Ben Whishaw Channels The Controversial Punk Russian Poet [Cannes] at The Playlist.
- 5/19/2024
- by Gregory Ellwood
- The Playlist
In the Moscow Times’ obituary for Eduard Limonov, who died four years ago aged 77, writer Mark Galeotti summed up the poet-turned-politician in two simple sentences: “Was Limonov a visionary or a poser, an artist or a politician, a leftist or a rightist? The answer to all of them is, of course, yes.” This is key to understanding Kirill Serebrennikov’s latest movie, a boundary-blasting biopic that simply drips with punk-rock energy, revealing everything and nothing about a slippery character whose modus operandi was reinvention from the get-go and for whom consistency really was the hobgoblin of small minds.
Limonov, the poet, fits into a long line of miscreant artists, such as writer Vladimir Mayakovsky, who co-wrote the manifesto of the Russian Futurist group (“A Slap in the Face of Public Taste”) in 1912, and Dziga Vertov, the avant-garde director whose Man with a Movie Camera (1929) changed the face of documentary altogether.
Limonov, the poet, fits into a long line of miscreant artists, such as writer Vladimir Mayakovsky, who co-wrote the manifesto of the Russian Futurist group (“A Slap in the Face of Public Taste”) in 1912, and Dziga Vertov, the avant-garde director whose Man with a Movie Camera (1929) changed the face of documentary altogether.
- 5/19/2024
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
That the name Limonov is pronounced “Lee-mwah-nov” is one of two main things that Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Limonov: The Ballad” teaches us about Eduard Limonov, the Russian radical, poet, dissident, emigré, returnee, detainee, bête noire and cause célèbre who in 1993 co-founded the ultra-nationalist National Bolshevik Party. The second is that, as imagined in this adaptation of Emmanuel Carrère’s 2015 fictionalized biography, for all the shifting identities and attitudes he assumed over the course of his controversial life, his persona as an aggravatingly self-aggrandizing solipsist never wavered.
A sharper film could have excavated his contradictions to illuminating effect — the rise of populist, crypto-fascist political movements and their self-ordained maverick leaders being a not-irrelevant phenomenon these days. But Serebrennikov, in love with the posture of the rebel that Limonov adopted without being terribly interested in what, at any given moment, he claimed to be rebelling against, mistakes the trappings for the substance...
A sharper film could have excavated his contradictions to illuminating effect — the rise of populist, crypto-fascist political movements and their self-ordained maverick leaders being a not-irrelevant phenomenon these days. But Serebrennikov, in love with the posture of the rebel that Limonov adopted without being terribly interested in what, at any given moment, he claimed to be rebelling against, mistakes the trappings for the substance...
- 5/19/2024
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Sex is politics and politics is sex in Kirill Serebrennikov’s recklessly beautiful, wildly entertaining English-language debut “Limonov: The Ballad.” This punk rock epic moves at the pace of a train coming off its tracks across Moscow, New York, Paris, and back to Russia again, starring Ben Whishaw in a career-crowning lead performance as the self-styled alternative poet and political dissident Eduard Limonov (who died in 2020). Based on French writer and journalist Emmanuel Carrère’s biographical novel, “Limonov” spans the 1960s to near present-day Siberia to tell with orgiastic excess the life story of the eventual founder of the National Bolshevik Party, which married a far-left youth movement to far-right fascist ideology. But while Limonov’s politics are inextricable from the libertine hedonist he was, Serebrennikov’s film is more a purely pleasurable romantic odyssey than political deep dive, radiating a countercultural energy that smacks of freewheeling ‘70s cinema more...
- 5/19/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Cannes film festival
Eduard Limonov’s bizarre career, from rebel émigré writer in New York to leader of a fascistic, militaristic political group, is told with gusto by Kirill Serebrennikov
Fascism, punk, euphoria and despair … it’s all here, or mostly, in this hilarious biopic of Eduard Limonov, the rock’n’roll émigré Russian writer and patriot-dissident who wound up poverty-stricken in New York at about the same time as Sid Vicious. Limonov became an angry bohemian, a sexual outlaw and a celebrated adulte terrible in French literary circles in the 80s, railing against the prissy liberals and mincing hypocrites. Then he returned to Russia and became the leader of a violent group called the National Bolshevik Party. Tactfully, nobody here points out the similarity to “national socialist party”. It was if someone had given Michel Houellebecq a machine gun.
Ben Whishaw gives a glorious performance as Limonov – funny, dour,...
Eduard Limonov’s bizarre career, from rebel émigré writer in New York to leader of a fascistic, militaristic political group, is told with gusto by Kirill Serebrennikov
Fascism, punk, euphoria and despair … it’s all here, or mostly, in this hilarious biopic of Eduard Limonov, the rock’n’roll émigré Russian writer and patriot-dissident who wound up poverty-stricken in New York at about the same time as Sid Vicious. Limonov became an angry bohemian, a sexual outlaw and a celebrated adulte terrible in French literary circles in the 80s, railing against the prissy liberals and mincing hypocrites. Then he returned to Russia and became the leader of a violent group called the National Bolshevik Party. Tactfully, nobody here points out the similarity to “national socialist party”. It was if someone had given Michel Houellebecq a machine gun.
Ben Whishaw gives a glorious performance as Limonov – funny, dour,...
- 5/19/2024
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Reflecting the peculiarities and contradictions of the man who gives the film its title, Limonov: The Ballad is a strange, stilted, inventive, kaleidoscopic, challenging, imaginative and — above all, and perhaps entirely intentionally — irritating biopic of the Russian poet-punk-prisoner-gadfly-neo-Fascist Eduard Limonov (né Eduard Veniaminovich Savenko in 1948). To paraphrase the novelist Julian Barnes’ review of Emmanuel Carrere’s sort-of novel, sort-of biography on which this film is loosely based, Limonov: The Ballad is a work viewers may enjoy having seen more than they would enjoy seeing it.
It’s anybody’s guess how many will make the actual effort to watch this 138-minute ramshackle romp about a man who, before he died in 2020, applauded Russia’s annexation of Crimea and fought on the side of the invaders in Ukraine’s Donbas and Donetsk regions. Limonov’s unsavory sympathies would likely turn off most Western viewers, apart from the fearless fans of dramas about political monsters.
It’s anybody’s guess how many will make the actual effort to watch this 138-minute ramshackle romp about a man who, before he died in 2020, applauded Russia’s annexation of Crimea and fought on the side of the invaders in Ukraine’s Donbas and Donetsk regions. Limonov’s unsavory sympathies would likely turn off most Western viewers, apart from the fearless fans of dramas about political monsters.
- 5/19/2024
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Russian auteur Kirill Serebrennikov (“Leto,” “Petrov’s Flu,” “Tchaikovsky’s Wife”) is back in the Cannes competition with “Limonov,” an epic about Russian punk poet Eduard Limonov that the director describes as “probably the most complicated project in my life.”
Based on the best-selling book by Emmanuelle Carrere, “Limonov” delves into the story of its titular character who lived many lives. He was an underground writer in the Soviet Union who escaped to the U.S. where he became a punk-poet and also a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan. “Eddie” then became a literary sensation in Paris before returning to Russia where he morphed into a charismatic dissident party leader with rock star status, only to be incarcerated by Vladimir Putin.
Serebrennikov was shooting “Limonov” in Moscow on Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. The director – who himself has had troubles with Putin – was able to leave the country and eventually complete...
Based on the best-selling book by Emmanuelle Carrere, “Limonov” delves into the story of its titular character who lived many lives. He was an underground writer in the Soviet Union who escaped to the U.S. where he became a punk-poet and also a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan. “Eddie” then became a literary sensation in Paris before returning to Russia where he morphed into a charismatic dissident party leader with rock star status, only to be incarcerated by Vladimir Putin.
Serebrennikov was shooting “Limonov” in Moscow on Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. The director – who himself has had troubles with Putin – was able to leave the country and eventually complete...
- 5/19/2024
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov to Cannes this year with his fourth film in Competition and his first in English. Titled Limonov: The Ballad, it tells the incredible story of Eduard Limonov — pronounced “Le-morrr-nov” not “Limunuv” — a Russian renegade poet who traversed the world, reinventing himself whenever times got hard (and they usually did). To star, the director chose British actor Ben Whishaw, himself a chameleonic actor who’s just as at home taking tea with the Queen in his Paddington guise as he is playing Hamlet onstage at the Old Vic. Here, he talks about getting to grips with an enigma and recalls his first-ever Cannes for her movie Bright Star in 2009.
Deadline: How did you get involved with this project?
Ben Whishaw: It was during lockdown, so I think it was maybe sent to me around August or September 2020. Goodness… A long time ago now! It was during...
Deadline: How did you get involved with this project?
Ben Whishaw: It was during lockdown, so I think it was maybe sent to me around August or September 2020. Goodness… A long time ago now! It was during...
- 5/16/2024
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov returns to Cannes once again this year with Limonov: The Ballad starring Ben Whishaw, for which we can share a first-look image from above.
The film’s synopsis reads: A revolutionary militant, a thug, an underground writer, a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan. But also a switchblade-waving poet, a lover of beautiful women, a warmonger, a political agitator, and a novelist who wrote of his greatness. Eduard Limonov’s life story is a journey through Russia, America, and Europe during the second half of the 20th century.
The film was written by Pawel Pawlikowski, Ben Hopkins, and Serebrennikov, based on the novel ‘Limonov’ by Emmanuel Carrère, published in the US by Macmillan Publishers and in France by Pol.
Producers are Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Gangarossa for Wildside, a Fremantle Company, Dimitri Rassam for Chapter 2, a Mediawan Company, Ilya Stewart for Hype Studios and coproduced by...
The film’s synopsis reads: A revolutionary militant, a thug, an underground writer, a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan. But also a switchblade-waving poet, a lover of beautiful women, a warmonger, a political agitator, and a novelist who wrote of his greatness. Eduard Limonov’s life story is a journey through Russia, America, and Europe during the second half of the 20th century.
The film was written by Pawel Pawlikowski, Ben Hopkins, and Serebrennikov, based on the novel ‘Limonov’ by Emmanuel Carrère, published in the US by Macmillan Publishers and in France by Pol.
Producers are Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Gangarossa for Wildside, a Fremantle Company, Dimitri Rassam for Chapter 2, a Mediawan Company, Ilya Stewart for Hype Studios and coproduced by...
- 4/11/2024
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
Female directors are thin on the ground – plus ça change – but the lineup promises intriguing new films from modern day masters, as well as some unknown hot potatoes
• Donald Trump biopic and new films by Yorgos Lanthimos and Andrea Arnold to premiere at Cannes
The new Cannes selection has been unveiled in one of the most tense and fraught geopolitical situations for years, giving even more of a frisson to the traditional rune-reading activity of scrutinising the festival’s list, and scrutinising cinema itself, for contemporary meaning. There is a very prominent Russian director in competition, Kirill Serebrennikov, with his film Limonov: The Ballad, starring Ben Whishaw as Russian opposition leader and poet Eduard Limonov, based on the novel by the veteran French author and public intellectual Emmanuel Carrère. Of course, the point is that Serebrennikov is a notable anti-government figure.
As far as the Gaza situation goes, there is...
• Donald Trump biopic and new films by Yorgos Lanthimos and Andrea Arnold to premiere at Cannes
The new Cannes selection has been unveiled in one of the most tense and fraught geopolitical situations for years, giving even more of a frisson to the traditional rune-reading activity of scrutinising the festival’s list, and scrutinising cinema itself, for contemporary meaning. There is a very prominent Russian director in competition, Kirill Serebrennikov, with his film Limonov: The Ballad, starring Ben Whishaw as Russian opposition leader and poet Eduard Limonov, based on the novel by the veteran French author and public intellectual Emmanuel Carrère. Of course, the point is that Serebrennikov is a notable anti-government figure.
As far as the Gaza situation goes, there is...
- 4/11/2024
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Acclaimed auteurs Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Paolo Sorrentino and Andrea Arnold are among the filmmakers set to compete for the coveted Palme d’Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.
A total of 19 features were revealed today (April 11) that will play in Competition at the festival, set to run May 14-25.
Rarely a festival to veer far from familiar names, the Competition line-up is dominated by directors who have been selected multiple times for Cannes.
They include US filmmaker Coppola with sci-fi epic Megalopolis, which stars Adam Driver and is set in a future version of New York City following a disaster.
A total of 19 features were revealed today (April 11) that will play in Competition at the festival, set to run May 14-25.
Rarely a festival to veer far from familiar names, the Competition line-up is dominated by directors who have been selected multiple times for Cannes.
They include US filmmaker Coppola with sci-fi epic Megalopolis, which stars Adam Driver and is set in a future version of New York City following a disaster.
- 4/11/2024
- ScreenDaily
Kirill Serebrennikov, the celebrated Russian playwright and director whose last three films competed at Cannes, is set to create and direct a sensual, gothic TV adaptation of “The Phantom of the Opera,” Gaston Leroux’s 19th century novel.
Serebrennikov’s TV debut, the subversive six-part miniseries will be shot in English and is being produced by Aude Albano at Pathé, in association with Ilya Stewart at Hype Studios. The latter has collaborated with Serebrennikov on his critically acclaimed movies, including “Leto,” “Petrov’s Flu” and “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” all of which have played at Cannes.
Described as a “riveting psychological thriller with horrific undertones” by the production team, the story of “The Phantom of the Opera” revolves around an up-and-coming artist, Christine Daaé, who becomes the obsession of a disfigured musical genius, a monster haunting the Paris Opera House. Known as the Phantom of the Opera, the maleficent figure is a controlling,...
Serebrennikov’s TV debut, the subversive six-part miniseries will be shot in English and is being produced by Aude Albano at Pathé, in association with Ilya Stewart at Hype Studios. The latter has collaborated with Serebrennikov on his critically acclaimed movies, including “Leto,” “Petrov’s Flu” and “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” all of which have played at Cannes.
Described as a “riveting psychological thriller with horrific undertones” by the production team, the story of “The Phantom of the Opera” revolves around an up-and-coming artist, Christine Daaé, who becomes the obsession of a disfigured musical genius, a monster haunting the Paris Opera House. Known as the Phantom of the Opera, the maleficent figure is a controlling,...
- 9/6/2023
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Producer Ilya Stewart has launched an independent studio based in Europe that will operate on a global scale, working with international talent and focusing on English-language feature films and television series, Variety can exclusively reveal.
Hype Studios is the new venture from Stewart, the formerly Moscow-based producer who in recent years has been a fixture at the Cannes Film Festival, where his collaborations with Russian auteur Kirill Serebrennikov, including “Petrov’s Flu” and “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” have premiered in competition.
Among the co-productions with American and European partners currently on Hype Studios’ slate is Zach Wigon’s “Sanctuary,” starring Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott, which premieres as a Special Presentation next month at the Toronto International Film Festival and was produced with Rumble Films and Mosaic Films, along with Charades. Also on the slate is Pietro Marcello’s French-language “Scarlet,” produced in partnership with CG Cinéma’s Charles Gillibert, which opened this...
Hype Studios is the new venture from Stewart, the formerly Moscow-based producer who in recent years has been a fixture at the Cannes Film Festival, where his collaborations with Russian auteur Kirill Serebrennikov, including “Petrov’s Flu” and “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” have premiered in competition.
Among the co-productions with American and European partners currently on Hype Studios’ slate is Zach Wigon’s “Sanctuary,” starring Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott, which premieres as a Special Presentation next month at the Toronto International Film Festival and was produced with Rumble Films and Mosaic Films, along with Charades. Also on the slate is Pietro Marcello’s French-language “Scarlet,” produced in partnership with CG Cinéma’s Charles Gillibert, which opened this...
- 8/25/2022
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Exclusive: Coda producer Pathé has concluded a raft of sales on its Cannes slate including for starry French drama Masquerade, Directors’ Fortnight entry Paris Memories and Penelope Cruz title L’Immensita.
Nicolas Bedos’ Out of Competition drama Masquerade (Mascarade), starring Pierre Niney, Isabelle Adjani, Francois Cluzet, Emmanuelle Devos and Marine Vacth, was acquired in Europe by Koch Media (Germany and Austria), Lucky Red (Italy), Rosebud.21 (Greece), Cinemundo (Portugal), M2 Films (Poland), Paradiso Films, Bir Film (Turkey), Pathé Films Ag (Switzerland), and Sun Diamond (Spain).
Sun Diamond also picked up South and Central America, while Canada sold to MK2, Taiwan to Creative Century, and Australia/New Zealand to Madman, rounded off by Skeye who will service airlines.
The film follows Adrien, a dancer whose career was shattered by a motorcycle accident. Adrien squanders his youth in idleness until he meets Margot, who lives off scams.
Nicolas Bedos’ Out of Competition drama Masquerade (Mascarade), starring Pierre Niney, Isabelle Adjani, Francois Cluzet, Emmanuelle Devos and Marine Vacth, was acquired in Europe by Koch Media (Germany and Austria), Lucky Red (Italy), Rosebud.21 (Greece), Cinemundo (Portugal), M2 Films (Poland), Paradiso Films, Bir Film (Turkey), Pathé Films Ag (Switzerland), and Sun Diamond (Spain).
Sun Diamond also picked up South and Central America, while Canada sold to MK2, Taiwan to Creative Century, and Australia/New Zealand to Madman, rounded off by Skeye who will service airlines.
The film follows Adrien, a dancer whose career was shattered by a motorcycle accident. Adrien squanders his youth in idleness until he meets Margot, who lives off scams.
- 6/1/2022
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
Following the tragic passing of Gaspard Ulliel, one of the projects he was attached to has found a new actor. 1917 star George MacKay will now lead Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast alongside Léa Seydoux, Variety reports. Set to begin in August, the decades-spanning dystopian romance thriller is set in both Paris and California and will film in French and English. “Set in the near future where emotions have become a threat,” the synopsis reads, “Seydoux stars as Gabrielle, a woman who has finally decided to purify her DNA in a machine that will immerse her in her past lives and rid her of any strong feelings. But when she meets Louis (Mackay) and although he seems dangerous she feels a powerful connection to him as if she’d known him forever.”
After news broke earlier this year that Bong Joon-ho’s next film would be an adaptation of Edward Ashton...
After news broke earlier this year that Bong Joon-ho’s next film would be an adaptation of Edward Ashton...
- 5/16/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Iconoclastic Russian auteur Kirill Serebrennikov will be unveiling footage in Cannes from his new work-in-progress film “Limonov, the Ballad of Eddie,” starring Ben Whishaw as radical Russian poet and dissident Eduard Limonov and Viktoria Miroshnichenko (“Beanpole”) as his wife Elena.
Serebrennikov, who will coming to Cannes with his latest completed work “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” premiering in competition, was shooting “Limonov” in Russia when the war broke out. The director has since been able to leave the country and will complete the rest of the shoot in Europe.
A “Limonov” promo reel will be unspooled for buyers in Cannes on May 17.
Based on the best-selling book by Emmanuelle Carrere, “Limonov” depicts the adventures of non-conformist poet and provocateur Eduard Limonov, who grew up in what today is the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. He escaped from what was then the Soviet Union for the U.S., where he became a switchblade-waving punk poet,...
Serebrennikov, who will coming to Cannes with his latest completed work “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” premiering in competition, was shooting “Limonov” in Russia when the war broke out. The director has since been able to leave the country and will complete the rest of the shoot in Europe.
A “Limonov” promo reel will be unspooled for buyers in Cannes on May 17.
Based on the best-selling book by Emmanuelle Carrere, “Limonov” depicts the adventures of non-conformist poet and provocateur Eduard Limonov, who grew up in what today is the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. He escaped from what was then the Soviet Union for the U.S., where he became a switchblade-waving punk poet,...
- 5/11/2022
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Versatile British actor Ben Whishaw, best known globally for playing Q in five James Bond films, has been cast in what’s bound to be the one of the most complex roles of his career.
The actor will play the titular character in “Limonov, The Ballad of Eddie,” a new English-language film by revered Russian auteur Kirill Serebrennikov, about radical Russian poet and political dissident Eduard Limonov.
The film, which will be presented as a promo reel to buyers in Cannes on May 17, is inspired by the best-selling novel “Limonov” by French writer and director Emmanuelle Carrère, which was translated in 35 countries. See interview with Serebrennikov.
“Limonov” delves into the story of Eduard Limonov, who lived many lives. He was an underground writer in the Soviet Union who escaped to the U.S. where he became a punk-poet and also a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan. “Eddie” then became...
The actor will play the titular character in “Limonov, The Ballad of Eddie,” a new English-language film by revered Russian auteur Kirill Serebrennikov, about radical Russian poet and political dissident Eduard Limonov.
The film, which will be presented as a promo reel to buyers in Cannes on May 17, is inspired by the best-selling novel “Limonov” by French writer and director Emmanuelle Carrère, which was translated in 35 countries. See interview with Serebrennikov.
“Limonov” delves into the story of Eduard Limonov, who lived many lives. He was an underground writer in the Soviet Union who escaped to the U.S. where he became a punk-poet and also a butler to a millionaire in Manhattan. “Eddie” then became...
- 5/11/2022
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
It instilled in him the artistic vision that runs through all of films.
Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski kicked off a masterclass at the Doha Film Institute’s talent development meeting Qumra with an account of his traumatic move to the UK from Communist-era Poland as a teenager in the early 1970s.
“Pre, pre-Brexit England was even more Brexit than you can imagine. It really had no truck with foreign civilisation, or with Europe,” said Pawlikowski, who arrived in the UK with his mother at the age of 14 just as the country was gearing up to join the European Union...
Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski kicked off a masterclass at the Doha Film Institute’s talent development meeting Qumra with an account of his traumatic move to the UK from Communist-era Poland as a teenager in the early 1970s.
“Pre, pre-Brexit England was even more Brexit than you can imagine. It really had no truck with foreign civilisation, or with Europe,” said Pawlikowski, who arrived in the UK with his mother at the age of 14 just as the country was gearing up to join the European Union...
- 3/20/2019
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
After scoring a coup with the TV adaptation of “My Brilliant Friend,” and with projects such as Paolo Sorrentino’s “The New Pope” and Oscar-nominated director Pawel Pawlikowski’s next film in the pipeline, Italy’s Wildside is in a pretty brilliant spot.
Ten years after being co-founded by producers Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Mieli, the shingle is expanding its international footprint and is on its way toward becoming, as Mieli puts it, “a home for big auteurs, both directors and writers…who can generate stories that can travel.” This can also mean mainstream-minded talents, he said.
That game plan includes Wildside’s first English-language series, about the life of film and fashion icon Audrey Hepburn, and other high-end projects in various stages. Among these is an “ambitious” new film by U.S.-trained Italian director Emanuele Crialese, who broke out with “Respiro” and helmed an episode of the recent Getty kidnap series “Trust.
Ten years after being co-founded by producers Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Mieli, the shingle is expanding its international footprint and is on its way toward becoming, as Mieli puts it, “a home for big auteurs, both directors and writers…who can generate stories that can travel.” This can also mean mainstream-minded talents, he said.
That game plan includes Wildside’s first English-language series, about the life of film and fashion icon Audrey Hepburn, and other high-end projects in various stages. Among these is an “ambitious” new film by U.S.-trained Italian director Emanuele Crialese, who broke out with “Respiro” and helmed an episode of the recent Getty kidnap series “Trust.
- 2/4/2019
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Rescuers outside Moscow’s Domodedovo international airport, January 24, 2011. Credit: Andrey Smirnov/Afp/Getty Images. It takes a lot to terrorize a Russian. Compared to the truly spectacular acts of terrorism and violence that Russians have suffered over the past two decades, today’s suicide bombing at Moscow’s busiest airport, Domodedovo, is too small-time to have much of an effect besides pissing off an already-pissed-off population. Back in 2004, two passenger jets that took off from this same airport were blown out of the sky by Chechen “black widows”—Chechen women widowed by the brutal war with Russia, and turned into suicide bombers. Shortly after that double-Lockerbie airplane bombing, opposition leader Eduard Limonov explained to me what he thought was behind the logic: “They understood that Russians wouldn’t be moved if only one plane was blown up, so they blew up two planes simultaneously, just to get our attention,” he said.
- 1/24/2011
- Vanity Fair
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