THE UGLY SWANS
Director Konstantin Lopushansky
Producer Andrey Sigle
Co-Producer Catherine Dussart
Proline Film studio
CDP studio (France)
with support of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography of the Russian Federation
and Centre National de la Cinematographie (France)
Under the patronage of Gorbachev-Fund and International Green Cross
The script for «The Ugly Swans» is based on the story about so called ghost town where the boarding school for gifted children was located. A young and frightfully strange generation was growing up there, infinite number of commissions and special services scrutinizing closely this anomaly were chasing around. A hero, who had to carry out his own investigation, appeared against these events. But that was only his excuse. He arrived to this town just to save his child. The fight between the characters arose not for the certain children but for the form of the Future that had to be chosen by the mankind.
The story «The Ugly Swans» tells us about a man colliding with a Mystery and touching the Future, the brave new world in which neither the hero of the story nor his contemporaries have a place anymore.
There existed so-called ghost towns in the Soviet Union. They were sealed and carefully guarded towns, where top-secret research, military in its nature, were conducted. The action unfolds in a town like those, some Tashlinsk-20 lost in the vast space of Asiatic Russia. In all the turmoil and shifts of the first years of reforms, it suddenly found sponsors. Media even hunted at Tashlinsk having good chances of becoming the new though unofficial Eurasian capital.
Riding on the wave of this euphoria, a boarding school for gifted children got founded in the town. Immediately after weird things started to happen. At first, the climate changed drastically and literally overnight: unending month-long outpours kept flooding the town. Later, there began rumors about a strange genetic disease, the inhabitants called it «wet leprosy», about some creatures, called «wetters» who started to keep the town under control. The town was quarantined, and sanitary outposts emerged on all roads. Only the boarding school with its teachers and pupils stayed behind. Besides, there stayed, or rather arrived to stay, numerous international committees investigating the anomaly of lit square holes and of fear generator. Everyone who tried to find a clue to these anomalies died violently.
Such were the facts by the moment a hero, named Victor Banev arrived to this town. His aim was to begin his own unprofessional investigation, to get involved in a fight against obscure and invisible forces hiding the very existence of a mystery. He had no right to lose that fight, as his only twelve-years-old daughter Irina studied at that mysterious boarding school.
Victor’s close friend from Boston, an American scientist Malcolm Golemba, co-chaired the UNO committee on the Tashlinsk issue. Victor met his daughter in his former apartment, deserted for a long time. While they were talking to each other he understood that his daughter had been «infected» by this strange disease.
At the UNO committee session Victor got acquainted with a very beautiful young woman called Diana Glumova, who did psychological and biological research for the committee. Victor and Diana got passionately drawn to each other. Victor also met another committee member who had skipped the session, Pavel Semin, whose aim was to clue the «wetters» at any price. He is opposed to the main hero.
Victor was invited as a writer to this school for meeting with the pupils. He already understood that everything underway in the town was somehow related with those impossible children, his daughter among them. The intellectual superiority of the kids was too evident and cruel. They seemed to have already won the right to forget about those who they outgrew so quickly and so obviously. The future was certainly theirs.
There followed another session of the committee where the decision of the immediate climatic attack which would result in the death of all wetters and children genius. At night, there started urgent evacuation, and it became clear that the forces carried out an independent verdict. Victor went in search of Diana and children, left in the dying town….
The epilog was short and symbolic. All wetters had died. The fate of the kids remained unknown; we only see Victor"s daughter, exhausted and seemingly recalling nothing of the past
Victor went out for a moment; when he was back, the compartment was full of his daughter"s friends. The audience gets led to understand that the weird future has not been prevented by the fearsome present. For them, there is still hope…
|
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION |
|
