Empire V | Victor Ginzburg

[BluBonnet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k4rdbhFOI8

Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival to premiere epic vampire movie that Russia doesn’t want you to see

If the Russian government keeps an enemies list, then there is a good chance that filmmaker Victor Ginzburg’s name is near the top.

The Moscow-born director, who emigrated to New York City as a teenager but regularly returns to his home country to work, has made a career of sharply dissecting Russian culture from the inside. Witness his 1993 documentary Restless Garden, chronicling the sexual revolution that accompanied the fall of the Soviet Empire. Or the fantastically wild 2011 advertising-industry satire Generation P, adapted from the novel by postmodern sci-fi author Victor Pelevin. But it is Ginzburg’s latest film, the horror-comedy Empire V, that has earned the distinction of being officially banned by Russia’s Ministry of Culture – and has paradoxically been ignored by international film festivals in a bid to distance themselves from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

But this Saturday, the vampire movie that Russia doesn’t want its people – or anyone, really – to watch will finally see the light of day with a world premiere at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal.

Adapted from another Pelevin novel, Ginzburg’s Empire V traces the rise of a disaffected Moscow journalism student named Roman (Pavel Tabakov) who finds himself transformed into a vampire. But it turns out that bloodsuckers aren’t the nocturnal monsters we’ve traditionally imagined, but rather a ruling class of predatory power brokers who have spent centuries controlling mankind from the shadows. Combining the secret-society arcana of the John Wick films with the gonzo nightmare action of Timur Bekmambetov’s Night Watch films, Empire V is a sharp and head-spinning satire of conformity, privilege, and the Russian oligarchy.

[unberechenbar]

This sounds pretty cool.

[BluBonnet]

I'm really pretty excited about this one