Shots in the Soviet plane

Young people bathe in the Black Sea. Darkens. Border guards appear on the shore, ask to smoke, wonder when they offer them Camel and say that vacationers need to leave the beach - at night it becomes a border zone, and it is forbidden to be here.

Young people, bathing in the sea, are really going to flee from the USSR. 1983. The father of one of the heroes is called in the KGB. The special services are suspected of something, they do not like that the student of the Academy of Arts goes to church. Father pulls his son out of the temple.

Preparations for the wedding are underway and at the same time to escape from the USSR. The conspirators who go on a “wedding trip” take out weapons, plan the capture of the Tbilisi -Batumi aircraft.

The only full-length pink film made with Russian participation and conditionally represented Russia at the 67th Berlin Film Festival (in the Panorama section) is the “hostages” of Rezo Gigineishvili, shot in Georgia in Georgian. This is a true story : the flight from the USSR failed, seven people died, many were injured, the surviving conspirators were executed. The clergyman Teimuraz Chikhladze, who did not participate in theft, but declared by the inspirer, was also sentenced to death. How to perceive these young people from the families of the Soviet elite - as heroes or as villains? Rezo Gigineishvili gives an answer in the name of his film: these are the same hostages as those passengers they captured on the plane. The film was filmed impressive: the tension is gradually growing, and a magnificent wedding turns into a gloomy performance, Danse Macabre, foreshadowing the misfortune.

After the Berlin premiere, I asked a few questions to the director.

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Rezo Gigineishvili about the film "hostages"

- I liked how you create tension when the viewer who does not know what will happen next, not familiar with history, feels that it will end monstrously. I even think that the moment has guessed when this drama begins - when your Nika hero is trying on the costume, and he seems to be crucified. This is a starting point, right?

-It's nice that the viewer notices something important for himself, focuses on the fact that you, of course, tried to lay into the picture from the stage to the stage. For me, in this film there is one and a half minutes of happiness when they bathe in the sea and kiss. And all that is after is fate, evil rock, a chain of rash, infantile decisions that lead them to a great tragedy ... their people and people who have become inconspicuous victims in the plane.

The very beginning of the film: bathing in the Black Sea

- It seems that there is really an evil rock, because suddenly a flight was diverted, hostages were added, then the wind began, as if the highest forces were against. And the fact that the priest was the main conspirator, also a hint of the intervention of supernatural forces ...

- Even in the script, it was difficult for us with the image of a priest. Because it is still inexplicable to me so far, why did a person of 6 months have no particular contact with these young people, and then he was brought and put him in the courtroom - a man who was not on the plane at all - and he was shot.

- Do you think that the version of the Soviet investigation that the priest was the inspirer of this conspiracy is insolvent?

- I do not know what responsibility, whether these people need to punish is the same is an open question for me. Those people who were on the plane, and a person who was not there at all ... What was his participation, how much was he listened to? Was this a continuation of the same logical chain, context, as relate to religion in Soviet times? I cannot trust the version of the Soviet court.

- Have you seen the materials of the process, a criminal case?

- Yes, of course, I read interrogations and archival materials that were given to me to study, interviews with eyewitnesses.

-This is a very important story for Georgia, it is still not forgotten, especially in cinematic circles, because there were people from the Georgia-Film studio, an actor and an artist. Have you talked with someone who in one way or another came into contact with this story, who had relatives, relatives there?

-And the participants in the mass scenes, and the artists and the driver in our film crew-this story somehow touched everyone somehow. A small city, a huge scale of the tragedy, therefore everyone has a very personal attitude to this issue. During the time, during this large period, the story overgrown with myths and legends, so finding where it is true or not, only possible, talking with these people. To some extent, this is dictated by the name of the painting "Presenters". Each of the people with whom I talked with great pain speaks of the experience. When you listen to these people, you understand that everyone has their own truth. Therefore, our position is that we must mourn any person who is the hero of the film. I met with Tina, who served the term in the colony, and with the mother of Gega, and with the stewardess, who was on board, and with the main pilot. That is, the work was carried out large.

-You carefully reconstructed this story, but probably you had to change, decorate, reduce, exaggerate something ...

- When you are dealing with the written script, the main thing is that there is a convincing world that you are talking about. You were not there, you retell what you told you from different sides, and everyone has your own version of what is happening. The question of exaggeration is not here ... You are sitting on an airplane, turbulence is already a lot of stress. You already have the right to exaggeration, because the emotion is so strong, and no matter what you say , this is your truth, and this must be respected.

Rezo Gigineishvili at the Berlin Film Festival

- The psychological drama and a thriller with the capture and release of hostages are interestingly combined. But the hostages are all, hostages of the Soviet system, which did not allow them to leave the country. This is the simplest interpretation, but, probably, it also has the right to exist.

- Of course, the context exists "beyond open boundaries", and then the story begins. The hostage is a father who bursts into the temple and pulls out, “saves” his son so that his son does not have problems at the academy. He believes that it is harmful than he is doing in the temple.

- afraid of the KGB ...

- He is a hostage of his fear, a hostage in general of his consciousness. Remember your favorite Soviet paintings, the film "Mimino", there is a scene there: two citizens of the Soviet Union, the main characters, come to the Hotel "Russia" and impersonate the endocrinologists-localists to be settled in the hotel. You and I already, thank God, is alien and wild. "Diamond hand": You drank "Coca-Cola" abroad, did Sophia Loren see? We laugh at it, but it is not funny. I do not want my children to laugh at these jokes not because they are poorly made from an artistic point of view, but we laugh at the context.

- Was it difficult to restore Soviet life, interiors?

There is practically no material from this country

- Of course, this is a leaving nature, everything disappears before our eyes. We are sitting with you now, discussing the Soviet Union, we are worried, we are still afraid of this, but there is practically nothing material left of this country. Sometimes I feel very sorry when we were looking for interiors, went into some spaces to shoot there, we, as filmmakers, rejoiced that we found a good object. We come there two weeks later: the person who bought this building has already repainted, there was not a trace of the Soviet mosaic, which was so attractive to us, operators, artists. The same plane, the board of the Tu-134 ... Those that fly, there the interior is already converted by a private company, it is organized as a business salon with chairs. Those that do not fly were very difficult to deliver and build in interiors. You know, even one chair was collected. Unfortunately, our industry is not the same as Hollywood, to come, go to a large requisition workshop and get everything you want.

- In Georgia, a policy of decommunization is pursued, that is, Soviet symbolism is consciously removed. Do you like this process?

-I say as an artist - this is a political question, but when I see something that was done by talented people in a country that was not free and bad, but this man was talented, and there was no other opportunity to realize his talent ... He built a building, it is beautiful ... We are very gestures, because we did not want to return to the Soviet Union, but the person lived at that time, was young, and he was in love with him. There is no youth, he recalls this time with warmth. He had a profession, that is, he does not remember the system, he cries in his youth. Because there were so many shocks that such bright memories remained about those times when they were young.

- Now in Russia part of the official policy is to say that the loss of the Soviet Union is a tragedy, that it was a great power. It seems to me that this is sad and dangerous, because it was a totalitarian country, my childhood passed in about the same circumstances and in the same environment as your heroes. Thank God I did not capture the plane, but I thought how to escape. When I hear how they say that it was a wonderful time, it seems to me that this is madness. I don’t know how you perceive it.

-In my opinion, in my picture everything is said about it. I perceive this unequivocally. You can say anything, but the border is open. Different people can argue, some admire the union, others are not, others are worried that it happened. Then there were shocks, we received a huge number of people who have lost their status, work, remained overboard, they received such stress that I cannot but empathize with them. But do I wish my children to live in a country, where everything that we talked about above is relevant? No, I do not want. Therefore, to some extent, I make a picture for them.

The plane was captured after the wedding

-For many in Georgia, your heroes are real heroes with a capital letter, especially in the early 90s, when Zviad Gamsakhurdia said that these were resistance leaders. This is probably an exaggeration?

- It is also dishonest - to use for political purposes a rash act. These were amateurs, people who themselves brought each other in order to enter this plane. This is the tragedy of a 21-year-old man, an 18-year-old girl. Here you need to understand - there was a rush to break out, because a person was deprived of simple, ordinary things. The people of his generation say: "You know, we took the playboy magazine and looked not only at beautiful girls, but at the background after them, looked at the car, at the street." I remember myself in perestroika: the gum was shared in order to consume one chewing gum for a week.

- American cigarettes in your film ...

- Yes, cigarettes. Therefore, wildness. To use for your own purposes a personal tragedy, try to pull the ears to the political context that you want, in my opinion, this is dishonest, although it is clear.

- It is important that your picture is about the history of resistance to the Soviet regime. Because, as a rule, everyone who is faced with its machine in arts is just passive victims. Your heroes chose terror, but still they decided to resist. This is very curious, there are still no such heroes in cinema. Have you thought about it?

- I can't remember other pictures. We generally turn to a person who is in trouble. Everyone had their own personal motive. It was less interesting for me to remove the direct history of a person and system. We understand that the closed border is a problem, but then there are relationships, the responsibility of society, people who live in Soviet Georgia, the quality of a person who can listen to another or give him another five minutes and take him away from trouble and what awaits him. I probably would have said more about an abstract state, which, according to its laws, was ugly, but about the responsibility of society and citizens who lived at that time. And about our responsibility every day, so that we understand what depends on us.