The Russian National Film Award "Nika" Award has announced the list of nominations, "Persian Language Lesson" is prominently listed, it will compete with "Ivan Denisovich", "Medea", "Captain Volkonogov's Escape", "Loosen the Fist", "The Sixth Compartment" and other 6 films to compete for the Best Feature Film Award.
Perlman (left) with two lead actors, Naville Perez Biscayat and Ras Edinger
Although "Persian Lessons" was co-produced by Russia, Germany and Belarus, the director is Vadim Perlman, a Ukrainian-Canadian. Born in Kiev, Perlman immigrated to Canada with his family until the age of 14 and rose to fame in 2003 for directing his U.S. debut film, Dusty Homeland. After becoming famous, he returned to the Russian film industry and successively made many film and television dramas such as "Betrayal", "Christmas Tree 5", "Buy Me" and so on.
"The Station for Two"
Since russia and Ukraine renewed their dispute over the ownership of the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine has banned and banned Russian film and television dramas made after 2014, and classic Films of the former Soviet era such as "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" and "Two People's Station" have also been banned from screening because the main actors were included in the list of dangerous elements threatening Ukraine's national security. After the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Ukraine tried in absentia six Russian cultural celebrities who explicitly supported the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk and placed them on the internationally wanted list, including the famous Russian director and movie star Nikita Mikhalkov, who played Andrei in "Two People's Station".
Perlman was on set
Fortunately, the Russian side did not take countermeasures to attack the poison, and the "Nika" prize organizing committee said that Vadim Perman made a movie like "Persian Lesson" precisely because he was a Jew, which had nothing to do with his Ukrainian background. In the history of Soviet cinema, there is no shortage of Ukrainian film masters such as Dufuzhenko and Bundarchuk, whose works are the common cultural heritage of all mankind.
In fact, "Persian Lessons" was completed as early as 2020, because it told the story of Belarus and was filmed on the spot in Belarus, so Belarus selected and competed for the best foreign language film at last year's American Academy Awards, but the organizing committee rejected it on the grounds that the proportion of Belarusians among the film's main creators was less than half. This move has caused widespread controversy, and many fans believe that art has no borders and cannot be buried because of some artificial restrictions.
Ivan Denisovich
However, in this year's competition for the "Nika" Award for Best Feature Film, "Persian Lesson" has a hard chance to win, and its biggest opponent is ivan Denisovich, directed by veteran director Greib Panfilov, which is adapted from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 1962 novella "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", the first work in Soviet literature to depict life in Stalin-era labor camps, which was publicly criticized until 1989.
Founded in 1987, the Nika Awards are the highest film awards in the former Soviet Union and Russia, known as the "Russian Oscars", and this year's award ceremony is scheduled to take place on April 25.