In October 2013, the premiere of the film “Depeche Mode,” based on the novel of the same name by Sergei Zhadan, was sold out in Kharkov. The director of the film is Mikhail Lukyanenko. Before taking on the film adaptation of the novel, the filmmaker was involved in wedding filming and implemented a couple of arthouse projects.
The film shows the events of part of the chapter of the novel “A River That Floats Against Its Own Current.” The running time of the tape is 51 minutes. This is somewhere on the verge of feature-length and medium-length formats. According to the director, this is 51 minutes of demotivation for modern youth, stories about the unemployed and homeless of the 90s.
If this project receives positive reviews and is supported, the authors plan to shoot another eight to ten episodes of the film, which will develop into a full-fledged series in which the events of the entire novel will be reproduced.
The idea to film Depeche Mode came to Mikhail Lukyanenko spontaneously. One day, students invited him to film their production of an excerpt from this novel. The director liked the material so much that he started working on this film. Now he is sure that this is a purely arthouse project that should be independent to the end.
The writer himself did not take part in the filming. The only thing: when the filmmakers approached him for permission to film it, he said: “Yes, shoot it, for God’s sake.”
Well, Zhadan plans to take a direct part in working on the film adaptation of his other novel “Voroshilovgrad”. The writer promises to write a script for a future feature film.
“I see this film as an auteur cinema, dynamic, action-packed, with expressive characters, with a twisted plot,” says the writer.
In preparation for filming, the director of the film, Yaroslav Ladygin, traveled with Sergei Zhadan to the places where the plot of “Voroshilovgrad” unfolds. Filming documentary footage along the way, they eventually made a short documentary.
“This is some kind of extended trailer. There, let’s say, there is me as the main character. I tell you what happened where… as a commentary on the novel. But the film itself cannot yet be said to be being filmed,” the writer comments.
The film’s budget, according to preliminary data, should range from 500 thousand to 1 million dollars.
In addition, Zhadan appears in a cameo role in “The Guide” by Oles Sanin, where he reads a poem at the Academy of Arts. This is a small role of the futurist poet Mikhail Semenko, who was executed in 1937 for “participation in a Ukrainian fascist nationalist terrorist organization.”