How did you come up with the idea to make Brother 3?

— For the last ten years, I have been studying cinema and the integration of works of art into it. I have been to various film conferences, international festivals, from Cannes to Venice and Berlin. My entourage highly appreciated what I was doing, they called it a movie, although for a long time I did not consider myself a director, but rather an artist who came to directing. And creativity, accordingly, was called not cinema, but video recording of works.

At some point, I wrote a script that the expert community rated as flawless. They said: it's cool, it needs to be removed. But I didn't understand exactly how this could be realized, how expensive it was and, as a poor person, I didn't know where to attract a lot of money to an essentially arthouse film full of bold moves and experiments.

Then there's a person in my life who reads the script and says, "I'll give you money if it's Brother 3." In general, I didn't care what the film would be called, the main thing was to realize all the ideas. That's how the name came about. True, then this person abandoned the project when it was already put into operation.

  • Director Valery Pereverzev, actor Vladimir Torsuev and members of the film crew while working on the film "Brother 3"
  • © From the personal archive

- And how did you bring the idea to implementation?

– Submitted the script and a package of documents to the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and received a certificate of a national film for the right to produce a full-length film called "Brother 3". The lawyers checked all the potentially controversial points, and when they were convinced that the field was clean, they received a number of international and Russian patents for the production of the film. And only then did we get to work - with the absolute right to shoot a picture with this name.

How brave do you think your decision to take on such a film is?

- Of course, as a sober person in every sense, I understood responsibility. And the fact that if you go to the square and loudly declare: "Hello, I'm shooting the film "Brother 3", I will immediately be crucified. There will be a hate, and no one will delve into whether the film is a continuation of the previous two. They will just say in a harsh form: "No, you can't shoot Brother 3," and no one knows why.

Also on the russian.rt.com "Some": critics and film critics are outraged by the release of the film "Brother 3"

The point is that this is absolute actionism, what Kabakov called a total installation. That is, when the artist does not go against everyone, but commits a certain act without violating the law, and thereby turns everyone against himself. Thus, pushing society to think and taking full responsibility for what has been done. He didn't do something in the bushes, but he did it and said: "I'm here, go, tell me everything you think."

  • While working on the movie "Brother 3"
  • © From the personal archive

"Hooligan homage"

- How was the work on the picture?

"I was constantly told, 'Who are you? You won't succeed, it's all fake, Balabanov died, Bodrov died. And I kept making a movie, looking for money, selling everything I had. I was starving, but invested in "Brother 3".

Then the tone changed: "What if he succeeds?" There were proposals for financing the project. He began to like, many wanted to drop on this ship.

And when everyone was already convinced that I would not give up my idea, that the work was being done very seriously, and the movie was being shot real, then a new stage appeared: "If there should be "Brother 3", then let Pereverzev do it."

Many of my friends, great experts in the field of cinema, come to my editing room, watch the episodes, and someone has seen the film in its entirety and say: "This is a new film language. Finally, we have a director-artist. Finally, we will show the world our arthouse."

  • Shot from the movie "Brother 3"

How did you connect your script with the theme of "Brother"? Are there references to Balabanov's films in your film?

- These references were not planned. But when an artist creates a work of art, it presupposes an infinite number of meanings and associations in the viewer. So my friends, and I have a small focus group, when they watch this picture, say: "So it's like in the first film or in the second." I look and understand that this is exactly the case.

For example, if the first picture is dominated by the songs of the group "Nautilus Pompilius", then in my picture sounds, in my opinion, the only group that can be called Russian rock - "Daughter of Monroe and Kennedy".

Or a family friend lives in the same Stalinist skyscraper where one of the scenes of "Brother-2" was filmed. One day we were visiting her. In the story, our hero wakes up with a girl in Moscow and goes to Tambov. And we decided to shoot this scene in a friend's apartment, that is, 30 seconds in my and Balabanov's film - with almost the same look.

The viewer will say that imitation, I will say that this is such a hooligan homage. If I hadn't ended up in this apartment, I would have rented it in another, but everything turned out the way it did.

Surely someone will find references even where there are none. But I did not build a picture on old subjects: neither constructively, nor stylistically, nor morally. I will say more, I would like it to be completely different.

  • Shot from the movie "Brother 3"

- How would you like it to turn out?

- I want it to be a picture that the viewer does not expect. In order for the viewer to leave the hall changed, call relatives and say: "I can't tell you what the film is about, you have to watch it yourself."

"Shaky edge"


- Why did you choose Tambov for the filming of the film?

- I was born and grew up there, I remember well the spirit of the 1990s. And since everyone expects that a film called "Brother" should have a shade of a crime comedy or drama, there, in Tambov, I managed to visualize it as much as possible.

This is my favorite city. I don't live there, I don't consider it comfortable for creativity, but my heart is there, my mother is buried there and my father lives there, this is my land. Therefore, no matter how much I criticize Tambov, I cover a certain gestalt with a picture and give the city everything that it gave me in the artistic sense.

- Will the film be about the 1990s?

"I'll tell you more. The director of the rental company, Vladislav Pasternak, wrote that after watching this picture, he had the feeling that the 1990s were not going anywhere. However, the time space in the film is abstract, we have both a modern iPhone and old cars in the frame. We are not attached to the era, because love and betrayal are timeless.

- The key word in the title is "brother". The film stars the Torsuev brothers, the legendary Elektronik and Syroezhkin. What are their roles?

- I have been friends with Volodya and Yura for a long time, moreover, Volodya is the godfather of my youngest daughter. The script for them was invented. The idea is that one brother plays a general, and the other plays the head of a criminal gang. They have one mistress for two, but they do not know about it, and this is where the conflict arises.

What is the word "brother" for a Russian person? These are monastic orders, and family ties, and something derogatory, from the category of "bro". Every second of the film there is a reflection on this.

  • © From the personal archive

- Who plays the main roles? And is there a division into positive and negative heroes?

- There are several short stories in the film that intersect with each other, the heroes of one novel meet with the heroes of another, but there is a girl who connects all these stories, and a loser thief who breaks into an apartment, but makes a number of mistakes that make everything go wrong.

The line between good and bad is very shaky. I don't want to divide into good and bad. I'm just honestly showing a person.