A hockey player who traded his friendship for a career in the United States returns home with a terminal illness.
Now he has little time left to make amends with his former friends and find peace of mind before he runs out of the medicine that keeps him strong enough to fight death.
However, a conflict with the local mafia ruins his original plans: now the sworn friends will have to embark on a dangerous journey through the desolate wild east, inhabited by the ghosts of the past, in search of hope for a happy future.
Read more about the project
Relevance
One of the problems of big filmmaking is the career elevator for auteurs.

Unlike young directors, the average age of production and scriptwriting staff is close to fifty by the time they become established in the industry (which is part of a worldwide trend).

because of this, some trends, such as youth cinema, do not resonate with their audiences: the creators do not catch their vibe.

And the most successful examples of popular "25-year-old" films were created as indie projects: the same "Young Man" from Nayshuler with a budget in the cost of socks at Mikhalkov became the most successful domestic film of the summer of 22 years.
references #1
The first references are concepts, proof to the team that the movie can be made in-house without the big uncles in the industry.
Inspired by iconic films from the golden era of the Sundance Film Festival such as:
"Clerks" (1994), shot by a 24-year-old Jersey convenience store clerk named Kevin Smith for just $27,000 from the sale of his comic book collection.

"Slacker" (1991) by Richard Linklater, shot for 21,000 evergreens.

"El Mariachi" (1992) Robert Rodriguez, shot for 7 thousand.

All three of these films were a real milestone of American popular cinema, because with ridiculous budgets they paid off in tens and hundreds of times.
And what about Russia?

We had Sergei Loban's "Dust" and... that was it.

Of course, we have plenty of low-budget films, but they were made for festivals, not for audiences. our goal was to make a popular movie.

On the basis of test screenings, we realized that we had succeeded.
Sand and Road
references #2
The second pillar was story and visual references: we took the entourage of Road Movie and Westerns as a base.
or, rather, Eastern, which did well in the Soviet box office.
The potential of these two genres on the Russian market is enormous.
history of creation
It all started with a brief teaser to test hypotheses.

After that we started the main filming, which took place during 2 years on the team's own budget.

During this period more than 200 people took part in the work on the movie.

The page of the movie in Vkontakte.
Who we are
  • Daniil Mart
    Author, screenwriter, producer, actor
    From childhood on stage, a year of living in the Kremlin, working in heavy industry with ex-convicts, KVN league. In the movies from illuminator to screenwriter.
  • Arseniy Moskovskiy
    Director, cameraman
    From podcasts with Basta and one of the most famous music bands in Russia, more than 10 years in directing.
  • Stepan Sazonov
    Actor, producer
    Music school director, designer and producer from Ural underground. From fashion design to political debates.
  • Yaroslav Surin
    Actor, manager
    The son of a fish tycoon who gave up his parents' money for a career in movies.
  • Eugene LAPS
    Sound engineer
    Producer of street kids, so able to pull sound even out of a rock.
  • Irina Borovkova
    EIWA
    Subway singer.
Made on
Tilda