i don't see. this here. is a movie called the edge the last movie to receive an academy award was burned by the sun in ninety nine and before that was moscow doesn't believe in that. so the film's got only fourteen nominations in just seven oscars. strange considering how well cinema around the world why that and is it a paradox. director of this year's oscar. started as a director back in the soviet times one of his first works was the movie wrong starring the country's rock music i don't. think she says this movie was a rebellion and allowed her to stop thinking through really since then she became

one of the gurus and movie making an industry. his fields have been receiving much praise in the country and abroad who want the main project russia's biggest international film festival in moscow now he's taken his film cry the edge. hoping to get the world's most prestigious. thanks for being on our program. let's start with the oscars why do you think russian films are often acknowledge its european film festivals whereas the u.s. academy hasn't really favorite films or russian. what do you mean we have received oscars but not enough only seven in oscar history participate in one category only best foreign language film. tried to get a different award. you know this is the second time i. i've taken part in this

fight therefore i know the subtleties solve it now film has the right to be nominated in all categories only when it shows in new york human if it's in a foreign language i really wanted to nominate pledging our mushed off for best actor but it didn't work out our film hasn't shown there yet is that can you even be nominated for awards like no there's just one category of there's this discrimination or something you know this is just a law of the us academy and we have to follow it. unless we make a film that american film distributers want to show immediately this year has been particularly successful for us the cinema with movies winning prizes at the biggest festivals spotlight has more. the last ten years have seen ever in the sense in russian cinema from the deep old soviet graces the industry had relied on government support for years it was forced to learn to take care of itself the

transition was painful with new names and merchant as a result one of them is alexy vocal groups whose how i ended this summit reap the harvest of the words of the berlin on a film festival the film was shot on the real station in the arctic doctors who played it to researchers isolated in frozen expanse one awards the russian pole thriller has also recently won top award at the chicago international film festival another russian film silent souls go to triumph and premia with twelve minute long standing in the at this year's vin these film festival but it's safe to because mythic and pull way to story of water and death gets three awards there including one for the best camera work the post so we russian cinema is askin for more and more attention film cherished dream now always getting an academy award the last time they were shown picture god it was more than fifteen years.

you nominated your film his wife or an oscar in two thousand right right just so you're saying you have some experience and you know how these things work once a film has been nominated producers promoters and so on make additional effort to promote the nominated film and to enable it to win this well if you're interested i can sell a book my experience in los angeles when there came two thousand. according to the rules of the candy we had to choose a publicist and the company that would the represent us promoters and so on and so we went to a meeting and saw three people sitting there one of them smoking a cigar they looked exactly how we thought typical american slope with this said in our film and they liked it and then they asked how much money we had us all i said we should find a rock five thousand dollars and they just roared with laughter and that's when i

realized that making a good film wasn't enough you also have to can pay me for at least three months. five thousand academy members but you have only one official film show that's free of charge then you have to organize everything else you have to advertise to make your film known this requires tremendous effort and then you organize more shows other than this free official one yes you can show it as many times as you want you know best you were also allowed to give discs to academy members is that no longer allowed that there's a pretty new series years to go there you forbade it and were they offering bribes along with this list of i think this could have been the means of pretext for forbidding as more anyway we have the right to organize shows in other places as well as los angeles and we are planning to show the film in new york is there are quite a number of academy members living there at the most. so it's quite

a big job that with wires phones in africa and a certain knowledge of how these things work. well now let's see what the russians think about how a russian film can win an oscar what should it take to win an oscar for a russian movie spotlights one of the has tried to find that. hey there well recently a russian look at all the ads has been included in the list of sixty five nominees who are not that let's see what people think a russian movie should have been awarded to win the war on which was written i think it should be some real situation from the everyday life of an ordinary russian person the story should show a russian character it should be a touching film showing the depth of the great russian so. i think it should have many russian elements it should have less shooting and more russian reality we have a very beautiful nature which would be a very good addition to any story our russian traditions should be at the heart of this film. the truth our reality good and bad the real

situation facing our country our russian mentality if shown in the right way to win is an oscar and i think real situations can serve as a good foundation for us to win an oscar life in russia as it is without the silver lining with too often see in the russian movies i think the truth could win an oscar it should have more truth however it should still be a form of art but if i think we need some new movie directors who really understand the great russian soul and are able to interpret it in a way that could touch foreign hearts out i've got that here she's got a question for our guest but would you have a compromise to win an oscar. the generally speaking is winning an oscar a compromise or not well i believe that today's new highest award in international cinematography so it's not a compromise right you win an oscar because you have

a certain standing not for a compromise you don't want i believe that some were good for one's standing as well as because you're worth something in filmmaking you know but it was like in spirit oscars are a matter of your rating mediately you either become a leader or you don't and you will remember mr me hell call telling me that having won his oscar his started finding budgets and producers for whatever films he wanted to make. this is most probably true so what compromises are we talking about the muslims from there can be no compromise but you heard the majority of people in our survey say that we need the truth but that we should see the truth in the films is anyone in the us academy really interested in that truth or do they prefer a story. well than a film with a russian american or even indian it certainly needs a story. that. doesn't need the truth but. you know the

mean trouble for most russian films is that they look a good story or a well told story for the truth i'm certainly for the truth when we filmed afterward to mush gone driving in. he had to learn to drive to types of steam trains. i support this kind of truth i want to make a viewer or and i can remember and believe what they see. oh i actually disagree with you as a viewer i don't give a damn whether moscow knows how to drive trains or not or whether a man playing a pilot say tom cruise actually knows how to buy a plane that's a different thing whether this kind of a plane can really land on an aircraft carrier. who cares whether they can or cannot fly and now disagree with me because you're referring to mechanics doesn't matter whether he's driving or someone else is but the actor also shows an

emotional response in that moment so there is a difference who were there we sure as documents back more of the actors face was it when the train races were filmed for real. and we were driving with our camera along side the trains with a much golf driving one of them and when i told them to overtake again there was a chance it wouldn't work if this was going on for real. me he's torn it over taking you should have heard our film currently scream. and that's the kind of emotions we want our audience to feel this is a film director talking and one who just finished making a film i think when people were talking about the truth they had something different in mind they want to see the truth about life about history about themselves the truth about russia. as you're going to america i mean are they interested in the truth about the russians are they rather interested in things

that your film shows like bears and russian girls and snow and other stereotypical things well what we're showing is first and foremost a very dramatic story and a lot of bears what kind of truth are they interested in about their story firstly the short count is exaggerated to we have a beer and three shots and secondly your phone wow i mean there was nothing stereotypical about it our film is about a winner and someone who won the war and met a defeated opponent a young lady but i believe this story is something americans should identify with as while they're waging a war in iraq. armed conflicts or happening in other places all the time so it's very important. determining. who isn't. a russian film

director spotlight will be back shortly we'll continue this interview in less than a minute stay with us. wealthy british style. writers. market. find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headline news to report on. the official. i pod touch from the top story. on the go. video.

and. now with the palm of your. quo come back welcome back to spotlight i'm just a reminder that my guest in the studio today is. a film director whose recent movie the edge a cry has been chosen as the russian nominee for the oscar this year. we were talking about the truth that is your film based it's a story. i know screen the. just fiction but did this story really happen or is it just a parable. no this story's completely fictional but some of the scenes in that situation definitely could have happened. but on settlements for

former german prisoners certainly existed back then there's even more so. the key task was to create an illusion i was a true story and the mission in a good sense and that's something i really wanted to achieve but there was one thing i couldn't understand these people lived in inhumane conditions in the middle of nowhere that's why their settlement was called the edge because even the train tracks up there they were working nonstop but what exactly were they doing there and why did they needed train if they had nowhere to go to just fool around with nowhere to the train could get there from the other side and just had to stop there is. no film they were lumbering and. now it took you more than a year to make this film which is quite a long time by modern standards you're always exaggerating the actual shooting to ground eight months only. you talked about having to torture

as a film director and this wasn't something you enjoyed but it was your job. do you think it was worth the effort yourself and others making people spend so much time in such harsh conditions. well you might see it well i can see that no we didn't truly need it. because you see for me as for the let me wasn't just a film that more i knew john if it was something else something related very closely to me that this picture was a living being and i cannot treat him badly that it's because it's in what way was it related to you was it a story of your family or what no i mean when you're thirty something for eight months and then you're prepared for six months and then you have the

post-production period for another eight months so when you have a hundred fifty crew members only living in a closed space for that long these people are really become really good and they become like a long large family. why did he choose the war theme so much has already been filmed about the war. my film is not about the war at all not exactly but practically it's right now after the war that i talked about that already. ironically doesn't matter to me when a story happens and that in this particular story just coincided with the period right after the end of world war two actually i'm more interested in a man who finds himself on the edge when he doesn't know what will happen to him next what is going to. you said you wanted to make a film about a winner writes as a film director you get a your message to the audience that you're in between people and gods some

directors believe that do you think this is something that's russians need today to remember and to think of themselves as winners that would actually i believe it's a very morning story you may go out to g.-d. and get here on the head and you know no awards. you mean like myself and fear for your children so anything can happen to them but to you worry is the age when we may be watching each other and some we. gonna start killing each other. this is what is interesting. so i believe it's an absolutely more than a film. and they. shot the film captive now adds i also read that you are also going to showed a film about how are you here. but why is

it because you think it's important now. yes and actually the same with captive where there are only three characters two russian soldiers and a young chechen lad it was first taken prisoner as their enemy at that which is and then they walk to their unit for twenty four hours and their relationship changes yes but that was because it's not important that they do for it ethically like in the edge if the male character who can't even say a word in russian is german but if you really feel that the person you're with is close to you in a spiritual sense or due to romance then an entirely new relationship develops. of course i know that too we won't change anything by making just one or two affirms but when little tolstoy. he was thinking about how to change things and how to bring people closer together in tell them let's stop at some point. of

saying the films should be either about war or love otherwise they're not our spectator what about both is yours about war or love not war it's about enemies and the victories span love love anyway those films must be about love otherwise and guess who. how would you characterize the genre of your felt. really hard to determine. coffin i would choke about how to label it in drama and yes sure at the same time it has something of a melodrama so we can see you to new genre dram boster. invented in his time a label for his film he called at home among strangers and easter. your first festival screening wasn't around so didn't yield any results or offers

how on earth will this film be perceived in the west but. the toronto festival is very special in general first of all because of its. buyers and distributors from all over the world gathered there and that's why i'm asking that i have been there three times with various films so why go walk or is very sentiment that you know is that after the film is shown you get million so it was just asking you to explain the story that we showed the film five times and not a single question and followed about why the characters lived there they were mostly about some emotional things but so i do. sense the toronto already and understood the film so will members of the cademy but he wanted them by the way speaking of offers i read reports that your film captive was released its

proposals from america to do a remake of the action taking place in iraq did that story continue. our guests but at this point who have signed up for a women or a green mentors if you know you know in general i'm looking american soul superposed to remake our film walk based in new york and in irish filmmaker want siri make. some reason i have had good luck in america i have won several festivals there although they're not as significant as in europe. but walker was a great success there but it was. because of luck but you make films they're not bound to a place or a particular time what's important is these films have a human dimension of war within maybe a ride but still all these stories are russian to a great extent except perhaps walk. i have

a personal impression that your essence has a documentary author can be seen in your feature films. began with documentaries i recall a film rock. brilliant piece watched by all of my generation then you switch to feature films how did that happen was this which dental or was it your chosen path to go from documentary to feature. absolutely yeah it was purely down until you know i had felt quite comfortable doing documentaries because i had never made a film on television and had no interviews in my documentary. i just tried to document a long life or even to reconstruct it to some extent however it so happened that i was to make a documentary about a belly dancer olga specific to a who was ninety five by that time and as we were ready to fly to new york she died

that so i had this crazy idea to trying to make it feature film although i was sure nothing good would result out of it you know how much one has to overcome bureaucratic financial another obstacles but eventually somehow everything worked fine you know i was able to make my first feature film she's ells maniac. and sooner. i realized that this was mine in i was sorie hadn't been doing it before it was a world of difference in terms of atmosphere unlike making documentaries you construct who live here and you're in charge and this is a responsible job but it's very exciting because like in our time it was said about television a friend of mine said this once and he said it was going to be cooler than t.v. news analysis but what can be even cooler as synthesis. is to show that

there is one more thing i tell my students and young the film directors if someone tries to make a film once in his or her a law if no matter at what age i can guarantee one hundred percent he or she would never give it up even though he or she has never done it before. as it is possible to return to making documentary films for making teacher phelps certainly. you know i have a workshop. where we try to choose filmmaking not only all future films that is my students make to throne speech here want documentary and one feature it's a very interesting experience. and i believe it is necessary now i want to make two documentaries one about that the new approach to no money from man and prominent theatrical direct turn in the other one shit that i will many boat

i knew well there's not been a single film about him and that's what i'm saying but i tried so many times to get into he's a rehearsals but he wouldn't let mean yet if he's saying all these actors would dream of getting into my movie i can only wish him good luck thank you very much for being with us and just a reminder that my guest today was a film director just. the edge has been chosen as the russian nominee for the oscars and that's it for now from all of us here we'll be back with more until then stay in our team and take care as about.

by saying it out russia is seen to strengthen ties with the asia pacific region which continues to wow the world with its economic prowess. also this hour on the heels of a joint russia u.s. drugs operation in afghanistan the country's foreign ministers hint at more cooperation to come plus. allegations of a new spy scandal could threaten relations between russia and georgia all of the experts say this is just another p.r. stunt. live from a studio here in central moscow this is r.t. russia's nuclear energy is to power vietnam this comes as president video of his it

to the gathering of the so-called asian tigers that the region's rapid economic growth has made it an emerging powerhouse of the world. has more now from. this summit has been very productive like as many leaders have said like most of the a c. and some it's a lot of work has already been done the russian president dmitry medvedev taking part in today's addresses and working sessions also said that russia's involvement in the asia pacific region is of a key strategic nature and he hopes that his relationship with the asia pacific region countries as a very. potential showing and economically developing economies and countries he hopes that that relation between those countries and russia will only grow and prosper if the russian president spoke at length about the importance of the asia pacific region and russia's cooperation with it.