​INTERCINEMA agency

FRIEDRICH GORENSHTEIN: HE KNEW ALL ABOUT RUSSIA 

 

director and producer 

Yury Veksler DEBUT 

production

Documentary, 82 min, Germany, 2015

оriginal title FRIEDRICH GORENSHTEIN: ON ZNAL O ROSSII VSYO language Russian

 

synopsis

 

The documentary is not only a portrait of the writer who was ignored by his contemporaries, but also the collective portrait of his great contemporaries – film directors Andrei Tarkovsky and Andrei Konchalovsky, writers Andrey Bitov, Victor Erofeyev, Evgeny Popov and Boris Khazanov, literary critics, theatre directors. 
In the second part we meet Friedrich Gorenshtein himself, a 1980 émigré who never returned to Russia. For over 20 years he lived and worked in Berlin, where he died in 2002. 
The documentary inquires into the reasons for rejection of Gorenshtein and the lack of understanding of his prophetic novels “The Place” and “The Psalm” in Russia. The film shows the writer’s commitment to his talent and his mission: to describe “his motherland” with relentless vigilance of the “biblical realism”. 
Most of the archive material used in the film is shown for the first time. 

 

festivals & awards

Nomination in the category “The Best Educational Film” for Russian National Documentary Award “LAVR”

“ARTDOCFEST”, “The Year of Literature in Exile” program, Russia, 2015

 “Novaya Gazeta” on-line festival, Russia, 2016

PACIFIC MERIDIAN FILM FESTIVAL (Vladivostok, Russia), 2016