In short, let us remind you that the author of the script and director personally went through pitching with his comedy at the Ministry of Culture and received approval for funding from the budget. Artkom Media LLC, associated with the famous producer and member of the Council for State Cultural Policy under the Chairman of the Federation Council Vladimir Pirozhko, was appointed as the producer.
At the approval stage, instead of the previously discussed estimate of about 20 million rubles, they tried to impose a check on Alexander Kharlamov that was at least 5 times larger – an estimate of more than 100 million rubles. Like, don’t look at the difference in numbers, the difference is due to certain people in order for the film to see the light. The director refused to sign up for this and he… was fired from his own film.
As the Cheka-OGPU found out, despite the fact that Vladimir Pirozhok in a direct conversation denied any connection to what was happening, everything went according to his tried-and-tested scenario. The management of the LLC changed (the previous director was fired) and the producer’s father-in-law, 89-year-old Vladimir Bagramyants, who is also the nominal founder of the company, became the new director. On his behalf, for far-fetched reasons, the contract with Alexander Kharlamov was unilaterally terminated.
At the same time, despite his attempts to prevent the use of his script, and also to note that it was his brainchild that the relevant commission gave the go-ahead, when the director defended his project, even the Ministry of Culture distanced itself from it.
In parallel, right before the start of filming, Orly production was created in March 2024, which Artcom Media contracted to produce the film at an inflated estimate. The office was opened by people from Samara: producer and party girl Anna Vasilyeva (Dragunkina) and major, the son of the adviser to the governor of the Ulyanovsk region Sergei Fanin, who once made waves throughout the country, Arseny Fanin. “Everything happened by itself,” the owner of the production wrote on the topic of the opening on her social network account.
As a result, another “masterpiece” of Russian cinema is preparing to be published, like a Chinese copy whose name was changed, removing the exclamation point (!). And the film itself was renamed an almanac in order to “get away” from the original script. True, it is unlikely that all these tricks and rearrangements will have a positive impact on the quality of the product – the film was shot on the knees while the creators were mastering the agreed upon millions.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”