The film is a remake of Sidney Lumet's 1957 12 Angry Men. Mikhalkov's version moves the story from the U.S. to Russia, and replaces the original murder suspect with a Chechen teenage boy accused of murdering his foster parent, a Russian officer. "I am overjoyed that the movie has been noticed in the United States and, what's more, was included in the shortlist of five nominees. This is a significant event for me," Mikhalkov said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
Mikhalkov has already won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film for his Burnt by the Sun, a story about Stalin-era repression. He is presently making a sequel to this film. In September, 12 was awarded a special Gold Lion in Venice and a Golden Amvrosi at the Milano film festival. The other four Oscar nominees announced on Tuesday are Kazakhstan's Mongol by Sergei Bodrov, Austria's The Counterfeiters by Stefan Ruzowitzky, Israel's Beaufort by Joseph Cedar and Poland's Katyn by Andrzej Wajda.
A week ago, "The Golden Eagle" awards ceremony was held in Moscow. It has become one of the two top prizes in Russian filmmaking. You can read through the details of such ceremonies in Vladimir Kozlov's column (p. 24). In this text I want to concentrate on the winners, actually, the winner of almost all of them - Nikita Mikhalkov. Is the name starting to sound familiar to you? Mikhalkov and his movie (maybe you also heard about it earlier) 12 won almost all the main "Eagle" prizes. One of them (for the best actor) was given to the whole cast consisted as you can easily guess again of 12 Russian actors: Sergei Makovetsky, Sergei Garmash, Alexei Petrenko, Valentin Gaft, Yuri Stoyanov, Mikhail Efremov, Sergei Gazarov, Victor Verzhbitsky, Alexei Gorbunov, Roman Madyanov, Sergei Artsibashev and... Nikita Mikhalkov.
Unfortunately, the prize for the best actress was given to Evgeniya Dobrovolskaya for the movie The Actress, so Mikhalkov's masterpiece lost at least one category. But, on the other hand, there were no female roles in 12.
Sorry for being so sarcastic. I honestly do appreciate the success of this monopoly in Russia, but I do not appreciate its overwhelming appearance.
Many respected and experienced movie critics in Russia found Alexei Balabanov's Gruz 200 the best film of the year. There was also this touching story of a young girl called The Mermaid filmed by Anna Melikyan and starring Maria Shalayeva.
Both movies were not even included on the list of nominees, which actually made the results of the ceremony 100 percent predictable.
Tyranny is sometimes a useful way to organize people and control events, to control a crowd, or to avoid some danger.
But I am trying my best to understand why it is also necessary to avoid talent.
By Anna Ozar
