see. this here. is a movie called the edge the last movie to receive an academy award was burned by the sun in nineteen 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. around the world why that. is it a paradox. director. as a director time. works was the movie wrong starring the country's rock music . was

a rebellion and thinking through really since then he became one of the gurus of. st his fields have been receiving much praise in the country and abroad main project russia's biggest international film festival in moscow now taking his film cry. 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 up knowledge of. 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 have taken part in this fight

therefore i knew all the subtleties saba could now film has the right to be nominated in all categories only when it shows in the us human what'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 the flag 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 rule one and roam the romans do unless we make a film that american film distributers want to show immediately this year has been particularly successful for us in cinema with some movies winning prizes at the biggest festivals spotlights you know him or. the last ten years have seen over 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 an example to grips who is 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 two researchers isolated in frozen expanse one awards the russian all three were has also recently won top award at the chicago international film festival another russian film silent souls who go to triumph and premia with twelve minutes long still even though they are at this year's been these film festival i think safe a day or two goes missing and poor way to store e of water and death good three awards there including one for the best camera work the post so we russian cinema is a skin food more and more attention the only cherished dream now is getting an academy award the last time. you're sure that you got it was more than fifteen.

you nominate as your film his wife's diary or an oscar in two thousand right right this year 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 when i would as well if you're interested i can silly about my experience in los angeles when there came two thousand. according to the rules of the canon me we had to choose a publicist and the company that would the represent us promoters and so on and so we went to meeting and saw three people sitting there one of them smoking a cigar and they looked exactly how we thought typical american slope would said it's 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 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 awful film show and 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 to 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 than any way we have the right to organize shows you know other places as well as los angeles and we are planning to show the film in new york is the. but a number of academy members living there 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 movie called ads has been included in the least 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 it 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 relative good and bad the real situation facing our country our russian mentality if shown in the right way we miss an oscar and i think real situations could 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 of god that she hears 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 compromise or not well i believe that today's the 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 will i can screw or it's oscars are a matter of your rating mediately you either become a leader or you don't. remember mr me hell call telling me that having won his oscar his started finding budgets and producers for whatever fields he wanted to make. this is most probably true but i mean so what compromises are we talking about the muslims and 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 but for the truth i'm certainly for the truth when we filmed afterward to mush gone driving in. he had to learn to drive two types of steam trains. i support this kind of truth that i want to make a viewer or and i can remember and believe what they see. 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 here because you're referring to mechanics wouldn't you doesn't matter whether he's driving or someone else is but the actor

also shows an emotional response in that moment so there's a difference who were there we sure was done back with more of the actors face was it when the train races were filmed for real in the ship but i were driving with their camera along side the trains with a must call for driving on one of them and when i told them to overtake and there was a chance it wouldn't work if this was going on for real. me he started overtaking you and 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 russian. rather interested in things that your film shows like there's a russian steam baths with girls and snow and other stereotypical things well what we're showing is first and foremost a very dramatic story and a lot of barriers to what kind of truth are they interested in about their firstly the short count is exaggerated to we have a beer and three shots only and secondly the phone wow i mean there was nothing stereotypical about it our film is a body a winner someone who won the war and met a defeated opponent a young german lady but i believe this story is something americans should identify with as while they're waging a war in iraq. in the armed conflicts or happening in other places all the time so it's a very important issue determining who their enemies and who isn't. a russian. flight

will be back shortly will continue this interview in less than a minute stay with us. dear mom i'm sorry that i had to do this i've been in so much pain in the past year that i can't take it anymore the stomach and chest pains have been getting worse and no doctor has been able to help me please know that i'll finally be at peace and with no more pain i wish i could have had a life with it was a bit always pictured her being my wife and mother to my kids i love you all see you all in heaven when your time comes i'm going to meet jesus christ. thousands of u.s. troops in iraq received one of these drugs a drug called lariam and it may have prevented many soldiers from getting sick the

question tonight is whether or not soldiers were adequately warned about its rare side effects serious life changing side effects. wealthy british style. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy is a report on our. quote comeback welcome back to spotlight i mouthing off and just to remind you that my guest in the state. film director whose recent movie the edge has been chosen as the russian nominee for the oscar.

we were talking about the truth. is your film based on a true story. i know the script is fiction but did this story really happen or is it just a parable. no this story's completely fictional but some of the scenes. could have happened. but on settlements for former german prisoners certainly existed back then there's even more so. he task was to create. a true story and the mission in a good sense and that's something i really wanted to achieve 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 need a train if they had nowhere to go to just fool around with nowhere to the train it

could get there from the other side and just had to stop period. you know film they were. 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 you well i can see that no we didn't truly need it. because you see for me as for the i mean it wasn't just a film that more it 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 this is 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 filming something for eight months and then you're preparing for six months and then you have the post-production period for another eight months so when you have a hundred and fifty crew members only living in a closed space for that long these people are really become really they've become like a long large family. why did he choose the war theme so much has already been filmed about the war. it's 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 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 human next what that is going to look at 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 as some directors believe that they still do you think this is something that's russians need today to remember and to think of themselves as winners. who have to i believe it's a very morning story you may go out to do and get here on the head and you know no awards. going on. you mean like myself and fear for your children so anything can happen to them but the key word is the age when we may be watching each other in some way. i'm gonna start killing each other. this is what is interesting.

so i believe it's an absolutely more than a film. you shot the film captain now adds i also read that you are also going to show film about how are you saying he's yes that's true. 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 who 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 a half nikolay 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. what about both is yours about war or love war and it's about enemies and the big tourists and love love anyway those films must be about love otherwise and guess who. how would you characterize the genre of your film meets really hard to determine. coffin i would choke about how to label it in drama yes sure at the same time it has something of

a melodrama so we can see you to new genre or dram boster. as like me getting the hell invented in his time a label for his film he called at home among strangers and easter. your first festival screening was in toronto didn't yield any results or offers how on earth well this film is 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. that's why i'm asking that he and i have been deer three times with various films so why go walk or is very sentiment that you know is that after the film is shewn 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 of followed about the characters lived there. they were mostly

about some emotional things so. since the toronto audience understood the film so will members of the cademy but he wanted them by the way speaking of offered 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. but at this point who have signed up for a women or a green. you know general 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 we walk was

a great success there. but 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. to ride but still all these stories are russian to a great extent except perhaps walk it's going to have a personal and fresh and 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 incidentally or was it your chosen path to go from documentary to feature. absolutely yeah it was purely done till 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 for 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 so i had this crazy idea to trying to make if feature film although i was sure nothing good would result out of it you know how much one has to overcome bureaucratic financial and other obstacles but i did actually some how 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 and 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 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 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 but when you get. there is it possible to return to making documentary films for making peter phelps certainly. you know a workshop. where we try to choose filmmaking not only all future films which. my students make two three owns each year 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 protests are no match for man and prominent theatrical director. in the other one. 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 rehearsal but he would 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 as. the edge has been chosen as the russian nominee for the oscars and that's it for now from all of us here will be back with more until then stay in our team and take care as about.

russia is keen to strengthen ties with the asia pacific region which continues to wow the world with its economic prowess. reports of a russian spy ring. what's left of relations between the two but. it. really is going to. manage to.

live from our studios here in central moscow this is good to have you with us russia's nuclear energy. this comes as president medvedev visit to a gathering of the so-called asian tigers the. economic growth has made. the world . has been very productive like as many leaders have said like most of the summits a lot of work has already been done the russian president taking part in today's addresses and working sessions are also said that russia's involvement in the exit pacific region is of a key strategic nature and he hopes that his relationship with the asia pacific region countries as there.