On Wednesday, February 23, Tigran Keosayan's drama "The Immortals" premiered on KION and Premier video services.

Igor Klebanov, operator of the tapes "Petrovka, 38", "TASS is authorized to declare ...", "Driver for Vera" and many others, was responsible for the visual component of the project.

The script was handled by Ilya Rubinstein (for him, this film was the last - the screenwriter died in 2020), as well as Keosayan himself.

In the center of the plot of the tape are four veterans of the Afghan war.

In parallel, the screen tells about their past (in the late 1980s and 1990s) and the present (today).

The heroes who returned from Afghanistan are trying to find their place in life.

So, one of them begins to engage in entrepreneurship and eventually succeeds in this business, the other becomes a writer.

A lot of attention in the picture is paid to the attitude that friends encounter at home: they are not respected, those around them accuse them of murders, and infringe on their rights.

An order is torn off from one of the young people in a fight.

The paths of the soldiers diverge.

The heroes meet after many years at the funeral of one of their colleagues.

According to the director, this film is dedicated to all veterans of the Afghan war - "survivors and non-survivors."

The choice of the name "The Immortals" is not accidental: it refers to the need to remember the heroes and the war, which, the director notes, was forgotten - as well as the exploits of the soldiers.

“We forget in this war with the memory of people that this story was made by living people, our fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers or my generation.

How, at one time, in 1989, in 1990, they decided to forget about the Afghan war.

Well, there was no such war!

There were no these heroes, there were no feats, there were no these orders.

Did not have!

And they were, ”Keosayan emphasizes.

The director admits that this picture was an opportunity for him to "bow to friends and comrades" from his childhood and other people who fought in Afghanistan and faced oblivion.

At the same time, The Immortals became a film about the director's generation, his attempt to tell young people about the youth of their parents and grandparents.

The basis was made up of stories witnessed by the director himself.

According to him, such episodes are characteristic of the generation as a whole.

“Why did we become like this and not different? .. It's all from there.

In principle, my generation was lucky (or maybe not lucky), because few people get to be at the turn of the era.

We have lived through the turn of the era.

I went to the army in one country, and came from the army to a completely different one, ”recalls the director.

Similarly, the performers of the central roles speak about the picture.

“This is my generation ... I myself just fell into these years, served in these years, at the beginning of Afghanistan,” notes Fedor Dobronravov.

“This whole story is all from my life.

This is my call, my comrades, peers, ”emphasizes Sergey Puskepalis.

Politician, veteran of the Afghan war Franz Klintsevich confirms that in the film "The Immortals" his colleagues "were shown to be real."

“This is a very smart, necessary, timely film,” Klintsevich believes.

  • © Shot from the film "The Immortals"

Filming took place in the spring of 2021 in Yaroslavl - locations were found there for staging stories from the past of the heroes - and in Moscow.

The roles in the film were played by Yuri Stoyanov, Fedor Dobronravov, Roman Madyanov and Sergey Puskepalis, and their heroes in their youth were played by Alexander Metelkin, Artyom Eshkin, Ivan Dobronravov and Maxim Yemelyanov, respectively.

According to the director, when choosing actors for the roles of the same characters at different ages, he did not focus on external similarities.

The team sought to recruit young artists who could capture the personality of their more experienced counterparts.

“They have to fit, but also capture that individual story.

Not similarity, God forbid, but gestures, eye movements .... This gives the truth, ”says Tigran Keosayan.

The older generation of artists, as Sergei Puskepalis said, have known each other for a long time, but they have never worked with such a company before.

The opportunity to appear in one film was a great joy for the actors, and the shooting took place in a positive atmosphere.

“Of course, it was a great joy when we met.

The most difficult thing was to leave,” says Puskepalis.