Berlin gets sneak at 'Island'

Russian sci-fi epic cost $40 million

By NICK HOLDSWORTH

A Russian sci-fi epic with a record-breaking budget likely to hit $40 million before its production wraps will preview at a Berlin market screening promo reel Thursday, Feb. 14.

"Inhabited Island" — currently filming in Moscow following location shooting in Ukraine's Crimea region last year — will go out on more than 1,000 prints across Russia in January 2009.

Producer Alexander Rodnyansky — head of Russia's leading entertainment TV network, CTC, and a member of the international jury at this year's Berlinale — says the movie's budget, scope and scale are unprecedented for Russia.

"Based on a novel by the Strugatsky brothers, the sci-fi adventure genre gives the perfect possibility for bringing together a very entertaining story and very strong social, moral and philosophical elements," Rodnyansky told Variety.

The novel was written in Soviet times — when Arkady and Boris Strugatsky found a way to write critically about contemporary society by setting their stories on distant planets in other galaxies. "Inhabited Island," directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, tells the story of Maxim, a young astronaut who finds a new planet while traveling through space in the year 2157.

Crash-landing on a planet that combines medieval cruelty and customs with technologically advanced weaponry and devices, Maxim discovers he will never be able to return home.

"At one level, it is a classic rite-of-passage story; on another, it's a story about the limits of individual human freedom," Rodnyansky said.

Maxim finds love with a local girl and friendship with her brother before the three embark on a quest to challenge the planet's totalitarian system.