Artur Smolyaninov Movies
- 2008
A crime and addiction-themed melodrama tightly wrapped in flamboyant, New Wave-style costumes, makeup and sets, director Igor Voloshin's Nirvana unfolds in contemporary Russia. Nurse Alisa (Olga Sutulova) relocates from Moscow to St. Petersburg, where she moves into a decrepit apartment building inhabited by disreputable characters. The young woman's colorful new neighbors include the bartender Vel (Marya Shalaeva) and her boyfriend, Valera (Artur Smolyaninov) who goes by the moniker "Dead Man." While Vel is at work during the day, Valera and Alisa ignite a torrid affair, which sends Vel completely around the bend when she finds out the truth. In retribution, Vel appoints a goon to scare the living daylights out of Alisa; Alisa promptly responds by breaking a bottle across the thug's head and turning Vel in to the authorities. The two women seemingly could not be more at odds with one another, but everything changes dramatically (and a friendship begins to blossom) when Alisa saves Vel from a heroin overdose, and the women - discovering that Valera has been kidnapped - team up to save the poor fellow from the direst of fates by journeying into the crime-ridden underworld of St. Petersburg. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Olga Sutulova, Maria Shalaeva, (more)
Director Vladimir Khotinenko takes the helm for this historical drama set during the Polish-Muscovite War, and exploring the events that followed the legendary massacre of Tsar Boris Godunov and his family. As Russia is thrown into disorder and Moscow sinks into lawlessness, Prince Pozharsky attempts to regain control and the enormous Polish and Swedish armies ponder the possibility of conquering the troubled nation. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ramon Langa, Artur Smolyaninov, (more)
- 2006
Fedor Bondarchuk, the son of noted Russian filmmaker Sergei Bondarchuk, debuts as a director with the harrowing and relentless military drama 9th Company, set between 1988 and 1989 at the tail end of the U.S.S.R. Afghani war (the Soviet equivalent of Vietnam). The picture opens in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in late 1988, when military trainees Petrovsky, Ryaba, Chugun, Stas, Pinochet, Lyutev and Vorobyev are whipped into shape at a training camp by the brutal, sadistic commander, Warrant Officer Dygalo - prior to being sent off to the front lines. After several one-by-one dalliances with the local whore, Snow White, and a cautionary lecture on the history, geography and culture of Afghanistan (which most of the men sleep through), the trainees head off to battle - first to the Bagram air base, then to the Afghani province of Khost to secure supply lines. But nothing can begin to prepare them for the brutal devastation into which they are plunged, or the relentless tide of slaughter that scatters thousands of Soviet victims in its wake. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Aleksei Chadov, Artur Smolyaninov, (more)
