FRANCE: 52ND CANNES FILM FESTIVAL OPENS WITH RUSSIAN FILM "THE BARBER OF SIBERIA"

Record ID: 388352

  • Title: FRANCE: 52ND CANNES FILM FESTIVAL OPENS WITH RUSSIAN FILM "THE BARBER OF SIBERIA"
  • Date: 15th May 1999
  • Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (MAY 12, 1999) (REUTERS) CANNES FILM FESTIVAL GIANT POSTER BARBER OF SIBERIA PHOTO OP CANNES FILM FESTIVAL VENUE STARS LINE-UP - OLEG MENSHIKOV/NIKITA MIKHALKOV/JULIA ORMOND ALEXI PETRENKO/OLEG MENSHIKOV/NIKITA MIKHALKOV/JULIA ORMOND THE CAST AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE CLOSE UP OF OLEG MENSHIKOV CLOSE-UP OF JULIA ORMOND (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) NIKITA MI
  • Embargoed: 30th May 1999 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: CANNES, FRANCE
  • Country: France
  • Reuters ID: LVAJVZCWEVOWKHK8ZGR9FE1YWNN
  • Story Text: The 52nd Film Festival officially opened on Wednesday (May 12) with the presentation of the Barber of Siberia, a Russian film from director Nikita Mikalkov.
    Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov premiered his
    "Barber of Siberia" in the Palais des Festival, a film out of competition which got a mixed reception.
    The three-hour tale of star crossed love between a young Russian army cadet and an American femme fatale is no ordinary blockbuster but Mikhalkov is no ordinary director.
    Mikhalkov has his $43 million movie as an attempt to restore Russian battered sense of national pride and reconnect them with their pre-communist past.
    The "Barber of Siberia" filmed in Moscow, Siberia, Prague and Portugal, is a lavish celebration of old Russia and the values of honour, patriotism and conmradeship Mikhalkov believes are needed to overcome today's economic and moral crisis.
    The film takes place in 1905, Jane Callahan (Julia Ormond), a once beautiful American, writes to her son, a cadet at a famous military academy.Her memories take us back 20 years to when she arrived in Russia to assist Douglas McCracken (Richard Harris), an obsessive engineer who needs the Grand Duke's patronage to sponsor his invention, a massive machine to harvest the forests of Siberia.She is supposed, as McCracken's daughter, to seduce te main representative authorities for him to be able to sell his machine.On her travels, she meets a handsome young cadet, Andrei Tolstoy (Oleg Menshikov).They share a passion for opera and the young officer falls in love with the beautiful stranger.
    Unexpectedly, Mikhalkov spoke about the Kosovo air strikes and said that the action undertaken by NATO was a tragic error and it reminded him the war in Chechnya.
    "I can measure the magnitude of that error" he said.
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