Киностудия «Мирабель» - What’s new?

to the Russia televisionnetwork, said producer and co-director Mira Todorovskaya in a Tuesday interview. A preliminary DVD of the film (which is still in post-production) shows Georgian actor Duta Skhirtladze in the role of Stalin and Olga Budina in the role of Alliluyeva meeting at her parents' house when the Bolshevik returned from exile, and swiftly beginning a romantic relationship, despite their 22-year age gap. "I love you, Nadya," Stalin confesses. "All this is serious and for a long time." In one scene, Stalin helps a nervous Alliluyeva take off her camisole; in another, he pulls her into the water while she is washing him in a bath. According to the film's version of history, the reason he was absent during the storming of the Winter Palace was because he was in bed with his lover. "The Bolsheviks have taken power-or haven't, "he tells her, as they hear the sound of shooting outside.  

The film is based on a novel called "The Only Woman" by Olga Trifonovs, which came out in 2001 and presented a semifactual account of Stalin and Alliluyeva's relationship based on archival research. " The material for a literary screenplay could only have been taken from this book. No one before Trifonova wrote in such detail about  the life of Nadezhda Alliluyeva, " Todorovskaya said. The script for "His wife", written by Todorovskaya , was also inspired by a 2004 documentary shot by her Mirabel film studio that covered the same story: "Stalin's Wife" by Slava Tsukerman. Influenced by the documentary's findings, Todorovskaya's drama portrays  Alliluyeva's death in 1932 as suicide, rather than murder by her husband, as some have suggested. "Having studied a large quantity of material, we didn't come to the conclusion that he could have killed her", the producer said. "I'm sure she  

commited suicide." In the film, the parts leading up to Alliluyeva's death reveal her husband's sadistic tendencies-at one point, he tellsher that she could be his daughter, since he had an affair with her mother-but there is no suggestion that Stalin killed her. Her death is not shown on screen: After Stalin insults her at a banquet, she is shown walking through the Kremlin alone, and then a shot is heard. Stalin was a "devil" and "monster", Todorovskaya said, but "in our film you can't see that." She believes that while Alliluyeva was alive, she helped keep Stalin's behavior in check. "She was like his second conscience. When she was no longer there, it was if he was released from a chain." One episode that Todorovskaya took from "The Only Woman", rather than from real life, was a tentative love affair between Alliluyeva and a psychiatrist in the Czech spa resort of Marienbad, where she went to be treated for gynecological  

problems. There is no record of such an affair, the producer said. In the film, the psychiatrist is killed after Alliluyeva departs. The producer expects the film to provoke controversy for its multifaceted portrayal of Stalin. People who see him as inhuman "will say that we have beautified Stalin and made him not as he was in real life," she said.Which is not to say that Stalin's supporters will like it: "I think my film will have opponents from both sides." The lead role went to Georgian stage actor Skhirtladze, who in 2003 acted in a Cesar-winning French film, "Since Otar Left." An earlier plan was to cast Vladimir Mashkov, a Russian actor who has played tough-guy roles in Hollywood, but he was unable to do it for contractual reasons, Todorovskaya said, adding, "I don't regret it at all." She brushed off a suggestion that the handsome, clear-skinned Skhirtladze could be too attractive for the role of a  

man who had smallpox scars and a withered arm. Stalin "was pockmarked and had freckles, but he was very charming all the same," she said.
Todorovskaya hopes to sell the film, made on a budget of around $3 million, to English-speaking countries, where she feels there will be more interest. In Russia, she has not yet secured an agreement on cinema showings, she said, and distributors are reluctant to buy the film. "They say that young people aren't interested in this-they don't even know who Stalin is. Why would they want to go to see this film?"