I HAVE MADE A „NEWER“ FILM


Karen Shahnazarov, director of the film „ Vanished Empire“

FEST’s guest Karen Shahnazarov was slightly confused bz the question about his latest film. Namely, the sound of his latest film is currently being mixed and hence the Vanished Empire is not his latest film.


„My previous film – the Vanished Empire – is a film about my youth in a country which is no more. It’s a film about people who lived in the seventies of the previous century and couldn’t even have dreamed that the country they were living in was going to vanish. You in Serbia are in a similar situation so you know what I’m talking about. I came to Serbia a dozen of times and I have been on FEST several times, the first time was somewhere in 1987, when Yugoslavia still existed. It is very difficult to describe feelings related to the dissapearance of a country. This is what I tried to show in my film; the feeling of people who never dreamt it would happen, but also to describe the changes in the world that affected the breakup of the former USSR. I couldn’t say that I would be able to precisely say everything that has happened, but I am sure I will be in some fifteen years. Presently I know that too little time has passed and that only the generations of our grand children will be able to define the events. What we can talk about is the awareness that the country we were born in is gone, that we are sorry and that we feel nostalgia for the things we lost.


The film I am working on currently is based on Chekhov’s Pavillion no. 6. I have been thinking about this project for a long time. Twenty years ago, I was considering its realization and I even found an Italian producer. In the original casting, the role should have been played by Marcello Mastroiani. I have long worked on the script, we have adapted it and transferred the story to the contemporary times. However, the Italians wanted more of a classical approach and we gave up the shooting. Twenty years later, I recalled everything I wanted, remodernized the story (it is happening today, twenty years later). The sound of the film is currently awaiting to be mixed and I hope the premiere will be held in mid-March, says Mr. Karen Shahnzarov.