Russia is a country very dear to Regis Wargnier's heart. East West gave us a proof of it. He loves this country's history, geography and people. Among them, first of all, his friend Serguei Bodrov, with whom he wrote "East West". Presented in Cannes in 1996, Bodrov's magnificent film "Prisoner of the Caucasus" premiers finally on the French screens. For us, the director of "Indochine" makes the portrait of his friend.

Yes, Sergei Bodrov's life is a story. It begins at the end of the earth, in the Far East of Russia, near the strands of Pacific Ocean, in the Buryat country. His mother left him, when he was still a child, to go to Moscow and rejoin the man she loved.
Sergei is brought up by his grandparents. Both of them, high-ranked in the Russian army, are military doctors and practice in a garrison situated at the banks of the river Amour, the natural border between Russia and China.
The fifties are the years of the Cold War between these two communist giants. Troops of soldiers are gathered on the two banks of the river. Nevertheless, Chinese people cross the frontier clandestinely to have the benefit of medical cares from Sergei's grandparents, whose reputation is excellent.
Often, at night, Sergei's grandmother, a venturesome lady, leaves the house to hunt bears, with young lieutenants from the camp...
Every year, little Sergei goes to Moscow by the Trans-Siberian train. An unforgettable time for him.
"It is like we had lived in a huge jail. When I was a child, it took us 10 days to go from Moscow to Vladivostok by train. Sometimes we had the illusion of freedom, but we thought that we never could cross the frontiers; that we never could go to the West, that we never could see France or America. When I was an adolescent, I was in the grip of distress."
Since his childhood, Sergei suffers from serious elocution troubles. He is a stutterer. His priority is to fight against this handicap. When he is 18, he decides to go to Warsaw to meet a woman who developed a efficacious but pitiless method. There Sergei is considered to be "not enough stutterer" to accept him to their school. Nevertheless he succeeds in making himself admitted. He gets over it finally. Partially.
Come back to Moscow. Brejnev's years. The worst ones.
Sergei works in the field of journalism and edition.
Then he writes books and screenplays, and teaches film writing at the Moscow University.
Transition years, Andropov and Chernenko assume power briefly. Sergei becomes producer and director.
When Gorbachev takes the lead of the Central Committee of USSR, Sergei directs an amazing film, the story of a 12-years old boy who goes through Russia. The kid is in search of his father, locked in a jail at the Far North of the country. Thanks to this epic called "Freedom is Paradise" Sergei is invited abroad to a lot of festivals and can finally goes out of USSR... His impossible dream came true.
Then the Berlin wall fell down. It is the end of the communist power. Creators feel liberated and "let off steam". Sergei recalls: "As soon as it was possible, for the first time, to express oneself freely, the Russian artists, writers, and film directors got rid of everything they had on their minds for so many years. Every publication was terribly dark because we were quick to testify, so it is true that we were in fear of learning a crushing defeat of the new government. For all of the Russians, communism is a kind of a dark comedy. It is the reign of absurdity and nonsense. Years have passed, now we represent Stalin as a puppet who would be in the centre of a gigantic farce at which we decided to laugh".
The disparition of the State Organizations left the artists and creators in a merciless economic chaos. No more institutions, no more support, no more decisions...
If you want to make a film, you have to do everything by yourself. And that was how Sergei launched out into the adventure of "Prisoner of the Caucasus".
He kept in mind this short story by Tolstoy that tells about the misadventure of two Russian soldiers kidnapped in the 19th century by Chechen rebels during the invasion of the country by the Tsar's troops.
He decides to adapt it to an imaginary war, of which everybody is in awe, but that has not yet begun. During the processing of production, war breaks out really. Sergei and his team were obliged to pull back in the next Republic of Dagestan, where the film would be shot in very difficult conditions.
I discovered this movie, six years ago, in Cannes. Since then, I kept it in myself. And now it premiers at last in France.
Set your mind in rest, this film did not go out of fashion for evident reasons: good ones and a bad one. The good ones: its simplicity, its beauty, the language of the heart... The bad one: the war is always raging in Chechnya. So that you could understand Sergei's courage and temerity, just imagine a French director who would have gone to a Kabyle village at the outbreak of the Algeria War!

Submitted by Juliet Regibot