The director, producer Yury Dorokhin and the script writer Yulia Byvsheva introduced the film The Winter Roadparticipating in the Documentary Film Competition of 47th Moscow International Film Festival.
The film tells a story about winter roads, which northern people call "a road of life". And today we have many settlements, villages where they bring food and fuel only in winter. For mining companies located in hard-to-reach areas, opening of winter roads is the only time when they can deliver heavy equipment.
Yulia Byvsheva: "It all started when Yury was asked to shoot a commercial about transport services and we thought it was just another video, but when we saw these people and their working conditions, we realized we needed to shoot a film about it. Here, the main character is the winter road, which people use and which they master. Before we started preparing for the shooting, I looked for some information about this topic online, but I found only one blog of a woman who used this winter road once in 2000s with her husband. And we wanted to tell a story about the way people live and work there now and which conditions they face".
Yury Dorokhin: "We thoroughly prepared for the expedition, bought high-power optics, compact cameras and the preparation played a very big role. Our shooting team was from Siberia, Irkutsk, for some occasions we called up specialists from Moscow because we do not have the industry, but the whole Irkutsk team played a critical role. Of course, we prepared questions in advance for the characters and the whole shooting team knew these questions, so that the cinematographer, the sound engineer or any other specialist could ask them. And the whole team showed incredible patience, working on their technical tasks and with the characters of our film, for which we are deeply grateful to all".
The film tells a story about winter roads, which northern people call "a road of life". And today we have many settlements, villages where they bring food and fuel only in winter. For mining companies located in hard-to-reach areas, opening of winter roads is the only time when they can deliver heavy equipment.
Yulia Byvsheva: "It all started when Yury was asked to shoot a commercial about transport services and we thought it was just another video, but when we saw these people and their working conditions, we realized we needed to shoot a film about it. Here, the main character is the winter road, which people use and which they master. Before we started preparing for the shooting, I looked for some information about this topic online, but I found only one blog of a woman who used this winter road once in 2000s with her husband. And we wanted to tell a story about the way people live and work there now and which conditions they face".
Yury Dorokhin: "We thoroughly prepared for the expedition, bought high-power optics, compact cameras and the preparation played a very big role. Our shooting team was from Siberia, Irkutsk, for some occasions we called up specialists from Moscow because we do not have the industry, but the whole Irkutsk team played a critical role. Of course, we prepared questions in advance for the characters and the whole shooting team knew these questions, so that the cinematographer, the sound engineer or any other specialist could ask them. And the whole team showed incredible patience, working on their technical tasks and with the characters of our film, for which we are deeply grateful to all".