Russian Film Week opened at the London Science Museum IMAX with a presentation of Attraction, a new Russian sci-fi film about the response of the average men and women of Moscow to the crash landing of a giant UFO in the middle of their city that will be released in the UK in January. After a brief introduction by the organisers and a director’s Q&A session with journalists, the film was screened for a large crowd in the IMAX screen upstairs. Afterwards, Greg D Smith got to sit down with the film’s director Fedor Bondarchuk and VFX Supervisor Arman Yahin.

I think I’m right in saying that your movie Stalingrad was the first 3D IMAX film from Russia to be released internationally?

Fedor Bondarchuk: Oh yes, it was the first ever feature from Russia in IMAX format.

Did you approach Attraction knowing that you were going to be presenting it to an international audience in the same way, and if so did that change the way that you approached making the film?

FB: IMAX interests me only in terms of an artistic view of the process, but after years and years of doing things in IMAX, you understand that it gives you a totally different perspective. With Stalingrad we had distribution in America because of IMAX – actual theatrical distribution, not digital, not new media, but in theatres, but it was only on IMAX screens. It’s an international language: here in the UK, we will distribute Attraction January 8th on IMAX format.

For me it’s another type or another level of language. It’s not about the format and not about entertainment, but a very interesting territory, visually first of all. Stalingrad I shot on stereo with two cameras, and with Attraction sometimes there were about twenty cameras a day on the set.

But it’s not about the marketing, it’s not about the format, it’s not about the entertainment; it’s about getting rid of the barrier between the viewers and what’s going on on the screen. Historically, all cinematographers wanted to get rid of this barrier between the screen and the viewer. It’s about feeling.

What were the particular challenges making this film?

FB: You can’t imagine how difficult it is to film in the centre of London with armoured vehicles, special forces and their machinery etc.

What’s the element of the film you are most proud of?

FB: I’m proud of the commentaries from the young Russian audience, really proud to hear them. They are quite strict, quite free in their opinions, so sometimes their opinion is quite harsh, and because [online] you cannot really read the profile, there is no[thing to] ID [them] so they are free. They are aggressive, sometimes they are quite funny but this is my audience and I love them. The feedback from the audience, this is my heart and I love this and I am very proud of it.

You spoke in the press conference about how it’s not about just entertaining people, it’s about delivering a message. What message is Attraction is trying to deliver?

FB: It’s about first of all, [the] aggressive attitude within ourselves, intolerance to anything foreign. From the very first moment with our filming group – and this was the rule, the filming protocol – we just got rid of the word ‘alien’. They’re just ‘others’, they’re ‘different’ –  with a different skin, a different nationality, a different religion, a different sexual orientation. Attraction is about this story, not about alien invasion. It’s about us, and our attitude, the problem of our days.

In Russia, it’s quite a vivid problem, especially if we are talking about nationalist conflicts in Russia. You can see it quite often everywhere, and this is what this film is about in particular.

You could argue that’s a problem globally at the moment, with what we see in America and across Europe.

FB: Absolutely, I agree with you, but in Russia there was no such problem like, five maybe ten years ago. But right now it’s a problem, like global. Attraction is about this theme first of all.

And are you already working on the sequel?

FB: *laughs* Yes, very much so.

Arman, you were in charge of visual FX on Attraction, what were the particular challenges of bringing Fedor’s vision to the screen?

Arman Yahin: You know, it was the first movie for us, maybe for Russia, about an alien invasion, so everything was a challenge for this movie.  Everything we made for the first time. We’d never made such a scale of destruction before, nor such a big presence on the screen of a CG character, and so everything was a challenge and it was both very scary and very cool for us.

Did you look to any other films or genres for inspiration?

You know, there was no particular movie [we used] for inspiration because the thing is, we all watch a lot of movies. So I think it’s some sort of an evolution of ideas. We didn’t take this movie or that movie; the main thing was the director did not want to make something like in [previous] movies, [he wanted] to make something different, so we tried to find new ideas and a new design. That was the main task.

Did you feel a particular pressure knowing that this film was going to be going to an international audience? Did that shape the way that you made it as opposed to if you had just been making it for a Russian audience?

You know, the Russian audience is very tough, they don’t care if it was made in Russia or Hollywood, they have this bar that was made by the Hollywood movies because there’s a lot of Hollywood movies in Russia, so I think the Russian audience are the most challenging for us, you know?

So once you’ve figured out the Russian audience…

Yes, if the Russian audience likes it, then we’re OK.

Attraction is released in the UK on January 19, 2018.

Thanks to Gill Littler at Feref for her help in arranging this interview