In 1982, Wim Wenders asked 16 of his fellow directors to speak on the future of cinema, resulting in the film Room 666. Now, 40 years later, in Cannes, director Lubna Playoust asks Wim Wenders himself and a new generation of filmmakers (James Gray, Rebecca Zlotowski, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Nadav Lapid, Asghar Farhadi, Alice Rohrwacher and more) the same question: “is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?”
Alla Demidova ranks among the greatest actresses to have graced the Russian-language stage over the past six decades, as well as screens big and small. She's famous for her tragic characters. Perhaps because she, above all, understands the world as a realm of worries and sorrow?
Alla Demidova ranks among the greatest actresses to have graced the Russian-language stage over the past six decades, as well as screens big and small. She's famous for her tragic characters. Perhaps because she, above all, understands the world as a realm of worries and sorrow?
A story about Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski, a twentieth-century theatre genius. Owing to his powerful extraordinary talent he managed to stay a true artist and a free spirit within the harsh Soviet system. In the film contemporary theater and film directors (Kirill Serebrennikov, Katie Mitchell, Lev Dodin and others) show how Stanislavski's method affects their everyday work. Each of the directors finds his or her own reflection in the mirror of his genius. In search of an answer to the question whether modern theatre really needs Stanislavski they discover that art lacks its most essential part – the human being.
Kirill Semyonovich Serebrennikov (Russian: Кирилл Семёнович Серебренников; born 7 September 1969; Rostov-on-Don) is a Russian stage and film director and theatre designer. Since 2012, he has been the artistic director of the Gogol Center in Moscow. He has been described as one of Russia's leading theatre directors. Serebrennikov was born in Rostov-on-Don, Russian SFSR to a Jewish father and a Ukrainian mother. Having graduated from Rostov State University with majors in physics in 1992. Serebrennikov had no formal theatre education prior to his stage director debut in 1994. He went on directing music videos and commercials. In 2001, he staged his first production in Moscow. Serebrennikov has staged drama productions in Moscow Chekhov Theatre, Latvian National Theatre, Theatre of Nations. He has been active in opera staging productions for the Mariinsky Theatre, and the Bolshoi Theatre in Russia, where he has also been a stage director and a designer for a ballet, Komische Oper Berlin and Stuttgart Opera in Germany. Serebrennikov is one of the artistic directors of Territory Festival in Moscow. Since 2008, he is a professor of the Moscow Art Theatre School, where he has a class of actors and directors. His films have been screened at Cannes Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Rome Film Festival, and the Warsaw International Film Festival where his film Yuri's Day received the Grand Prix. In 2012, he was appointed artistic director of The Gogol Center. On 23 May 2017, Serebrennikov's apartment and the Gogol Center facilities were raided by law enforcement agencies in connection with an alleged embezzlement at the Seventh Studio, a non-profit organization established by Serebrennikov. While no charges against Serebrennikov have been filed, some of Russia's most prominent cultural figures saw the publicized raid of his apartment as a political gesture, discouraging Serebrennikov and others from criticizing the government. (Serebrennikov had criticised the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and has spoken out in support of Russia’s LGBT community.) On 22 August 2017, Serebrennikov was detained by the Investigative Committee of Russia, suspected of masterminding a fraud scheme involving a state subsidy the Seventh Studio received from the government of Russia from 2011 to 2014. In a verdict condemned by the Human Rights Watch, Serebrennikov was convicted in June 2020, fined, and given a suspended sentence. Despite being in a supposed house arrest in Russia, Serebrennikov arrived to Hamburg in January 2022.