Kologrivy on an armored car: how Andrey Bogatyrev adapts the cult novel "Sankya"

Filming of the feature film "Sankya" based on the novel of the same name has started in Moscow. This is a story about the "lost generation" of the late 20th century, who grew up in the Soviet Union and suddenly found themselves in a completely new reality, without the same guidelines and clear rules. The director was Andrey Bogatyrev. Nikita Kologrivy was given one of the most striking roles. ""Izvestia" visited the site in "Moskino" and talks about what is happening on the other side of the camera.

Dale Carnegie, pamphlets about sex and a traditional plate

"Before "Motor!" sounded the first command, the film crew gathered at one of the most colorful locations in "Moskino" — on a spontaneous shopping plaza, recreated by artists to the smallest detail. The participants in the trial huddled between tents with flowers typical of the late 1990s, stalls with pirated videotapes and a bookcase with Dale Carnegie and pamphlets about sex. In the midst of this chaos, director Andrey Bogatyrev conducted an important film ritual before the start of filming.

"Let's live this time interestingly and vividly. After all, cinema is creativity," he turned to his colleagues and confidently slammed a white porcelain plate covered with autographs of the film crew against a metal counter.

On this day, the film set turned into the central streets of the capital in 1999. There is a sign on the house "Tverskaya, 14". There are advertising banners around, referring to the era. These signs feature pagers, mobile operators, hamburgers and the announcement of the Mayor's Cup in Equestrian sports. The production designers copied all this in detail from real photographs of Moscow in the late 1990s.

Here, in the exchangers, the dollar is sold at a fabulous price — 27.3 rubles, and the German mark — for 12.3 rubles. "Next door" stubbornly refuses to start a dark green "six", while a passing Volga GAZ-24-10 shoots from a silencer.

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Smoke, batons and Yevsey on a truck

The very beginning of the upcoming film: the preparation of the national security forces for a large-scale rally in the city center. About 200 people are involved in the crowd. """"Young men in berets, black bomber jackets and red armbands hold banners reading "Capitalism is shit," "This is our country," "Bankers on the bunks!" The protesters are holding portraits of Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky.

The team had been preparing for the filming of this scene for several hours. The tension on the set was growing, the crowd was visibly worried, anticipating the appearance of the main star of the episode.

"Do not approach the artist with requests for photos! He came to work just like you!" the second director commanded into a megaphone when Nikita Kologrivy appeared on the set.

The actor plays the ideological leader of the protest movement, Yevsey (in the book, Matvey). Commanding the crowd from the back of a truck, Kologrivy, dressed in a red turtleneck and a black coat, repeatedly utters an emotional text about ideological enemies, the threat of NATO and the Constitution and furiously urges the crowd to act. Just like Lenin in an armored car, rousing the people to a decisive battle with the bourgeoisie.

According to the scenario, this furious gathering of national security officers should end in a violent mass brawl. Police, soldiers and radical youth, including girls, are involved in the brawl. The task is to choose a person from the opposing side and, on command, swing a baton, but so as not to interfere with the main characters. Professional stuntmen practiced every detail of the fight with the participants of the scene for a long time.

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A new hero and a Japanese footprint

The main character of the film is a simple provincial guy Sasha Tishin. The same Sankya. For actor Anton Shavrin, this work became the first major role in a feature film. According to the plot, a personal tragedy leads him to the national police: his philosopher father got drunk and died.

— My hero is going through a real internal breakdown. Sankya tries to remember what kind of man his father raised him to be, and at the same time wants to send everything he was taught to hell. Sanka goes to the national police and participates in protests because she categorically does not want to repeat the fate of her parent,— shares Anton Shavrin.

Anton's novel "The Bearing Horses" about right-wing radical young people in Japan, obsessed with the idea of reviving samurai ideals and the monarchical system, helped him to find the character of the character.

An ode to justice or the scrapping of an era?

Director Andrey Bogatyrev managed to assemble a strong cast on the set: Fyodor Lavrov, Alyona Babenko, Yuri Nazarov, Evgeny Tkachuk, Daria Girnik, Slava Kopeikin, Egor Kenzhametov, Yan Kamyshenkov and Nikita Khlebnikov.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Zakhar Prilepin (the author himself will appear in a cameo role as a doctor). In 2023, the book was even included in the school curriculum. The producer of the project and the author of the script, Yusup Bakhshiev, calls "Sankya" a non-standard work.

— 1999 is the end of an era when a new government comes, and Russia finally acquires the features of the state that we wanted to see, and not the crucified society of the 90s, — says Yusup Bakhshiev. — What fools one had to be to believe that capitalism would really bring happiness to a Russian person. It was an unhappy generation that the country had simply forgotten about.

Now the film is trying to bring the viewer back to the era of change, when that very "lost generation" was looking for its voice. Ahead of the film crew are expeditions to Kaluga and the Moscow region. The premiere date of the film is still being kept secret.