Today's society is perhaps united by nothing but the idea of consumption.
40 years ago, the premiere of the sensational perestroika film by Karen Shakhnazarov 'Courier' took place. Do you remember the ending of that film? The main character Ivan meets a soldier returning from Afghanistan with a burned face and military awards, and immediately all previous disputes and passions retreat somewhere, becoming trivial...
A very contemporary plot. And now, young director Ilya Ermolaev (born March 22, 1988, Jelgava) is starting to shoot a new film based on the same story by Karen Shakhnazarov. The characters will find themselves in our reality. So what will come of it?
Journalists asked actor Andrei Sokolov, who burst onto our screens in 1988 from another perestroika film — 'Little Vera':
— Very rarely do sequels to the first adaptations turn out successful. Let’s hope that the new 'Courier' will be an exception. Generations change, the country changes... In that character Ivan, there is clearly a rebellious spirit, and at that time, this quality was particularly in demand. Both the country and the hearts demanded change. But today’s society is perhaps united by nothing but the idea of consumption. So today, that rebel from 'Courier' would find no place for himself; we live in a time that is too contradictory. Although there was such a contradiction back then: on one hand, guys were dying somewhere in Afghanistan, while on the other, many in the country didn’t care at all. Does this remind you of anything?
And a bit about the director of the upcoming film. At the age of 21, Ermolaev moved to Moscow and enrolled in two universities at once — the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography named after S. A. Gerasimov and the M. S. Shchepkin Higher Theatre School. He chose the Shchepkin School (Rimma Gavrilovna Solntseva's course), which Ilya graduated from in 2013. After studying, he was accepted into the troupe of the Moscow Theatre for Young Spectators and has been actively acting in films and series since 2011. In 2018, he directed his first short film 'Khudruk' with Yuri Nikolayevich Stoyanov in the lead role. After that, he directed several feature films and series, including the film 'Little Warrior' (2021), which received a special award at the Children's Film Festival in Chemnitz, and the series 'Golden Bottom' (2024) based on a script by Sergey and Dmitry Minaev.
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