From “Go and See” to “Partisan Legend”: the film about Father Minai will open the festival “Listapad” in Minsk

Listapad will come to Belarus with the Partisan Legend. The Belarusian-Russian project about Batka Minai entered the competition program of the XXXII Minsk International Film Festival and will become the opening film. Now the film crew is finishing work on the rental version and preparing the tape for release on the big screens.

"Go and see." For any Belarusian, these are not just two verbs in an imperative mood. It's a common, tragic code of memory. One in four... No, it is now known that one in three looked in the face of death through the eyes of Fleura, a boy whom war deprives of childhood, and many of his peers – and life. Now Fleura has grown up and returned to that hell again – Father Minai, a guerrilla commander, to make the most difficult choice: lose children, but win. Is there a dramatic arc more accurate and scary for actor Alexei Kravchenko and seems riskier for the director?

Igor Ugolnikov, director of Father Minai: Partisan Legend: I don’t think there was any doubt about it. We were. He was very healthy when we saw him before I cast him. Like a boar! But he gave me his word and lost weight. It is from "Go and see," from this human feat, although he was still very young, to the present feat of forty years of road length. I thought it would be the same thing.”.

More than three months of shooting. Forty shifts at two sites: in the Kaluga region and at the Belarusfilm location near Smolevichi. Prior to that, the group had conducted real research work in the archives. They collected everything to the smallest detail: they studied documents, went on long expeditions, where they looked for props for a reliable picture. Some of the scenery was created from scratch. Then, on Mosfilm, the film gained not only a face, but also a voice. This story has not just audio accompaniment, but a whole sound environment of the war: the steps of partisans, shots, the work of military equipment and even the atmosphere of the Belarusian forest – much was also created by hand.

Anatoly Belozerov, sound director of the film “Father Minai: Partisan Legend”: “Sometimes, you just hit the fence with a stick and you get the sound of a bullet ricocheting.” The shots there are unnatural, they are made specifically to highlight the horror of war, to highlight the horror of cold-blooded murder.”.

The worst scene is the execution of the Minai Shmyrev family. The youngest, Misha, was not even four years old. It happened in February 42. And recreated it on the set in November. There's no rainfall. The group was preparing to powder everything with artificial snow. But nature itself added its line to the script: so that not an ounce of untruth, contrary to forecasts on the day of filming, the sky cried with white flakes, covering with real snow the little actors who lived in the frame of death. A duet with her is only the voice of a mother who embraces and covers her children. Even if she has to rise from the grave herself.

I've been looking for this tune for months. Belarusian folk lullaby found and – no, not sang, but almost sick – our actress Elena Dubrovsky. In this film, she is also a creative producer: she knew that as many Belarusian actors as possible should be in the frame. Those whose families store thousands of tragedies like Father Minai’s can’t fake on the set. It happened.

Elena Dubrovskaya, actress, creative producer of the film “Father Minai: Partisan Legend”: “Their life on the szyazhyntsy, chattyrokh fell in front of the house.” You are an old man, and you are a small man. I remember those lines, of course, from school. You know how scary that is. This is only one story that we have been shown. And such stories in Belarus, in Russia – they are just a huge number.

Every story, no matter how tragic, is a story of victory. The final soundtrack of the film is the work of the authors of the requiem concert “Every Third” that has already grown into the hearts of Belarusians and Russians: a creative interpretation of the real oath given by Belarusian partisans. The song doesn’t have a visual, but it will. Footage will be shot in Vitebsk region, at the monument to the children of Father Minai, where very soon the entire film crew is going.

The first premiere of "Partisan Legend" will be a festival. Father Minai will come to the viewer with “Listapad”. They are already waiting for the picture at film inspections in India. But awards for director Igor Ugolnikov are not the main thing. He wants to worship the heroes again: those who, despite the huge price, survived and won, and those who, having come to the cinema for the difficult, important and their cinema, carefully preserve and consciously protect their memory, so that never again.

Svetlana Karulskaya, correspondent: My grandmother was partisan in Daniil Raitsev’s detachment throughout the war. Literally in the subsidiary brigade of Father Minai - his first deputy and friend. Like Shmyrev, the Germans killed her entire family, including her mother and four little brothers and sisters. Here they are. Burned together with the village of the Red Dvor in Vitebsk region. The name of the youngest girl in the photo is also Svetlana. So this movie is kind of the story of my family. How many in Belarus! This is the case when one does not have to look for an excuse to go and look.”.