Video: Secrets of "American Daughter": How a Personal Drama Tipped Karen Shakhnazarov into the Plot of the Film
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Film by Karen Shakhnazarov "American Daughter" was released in 1995, and only 20 years later the director admitted that it was based on real events. To create a melodrama, he was inspired by the vicissitudes of his personal life, in which at that time dramatic events took place …
Karen Shakhnazarov is known to the general public as the director of the films "We are from jazz", "Courier". "Winter Evening in Gagra", "Full Moon Day", "Lost Empire", "White Tiger" and others. The film "American Daughter" became one of the most successful in his creative biography. He himself did not even count on such popularity of the film, especially considering the fact that the shooting took place in the first half of the 1990s, when the domestic cinema was going through the most difficult times - many directors did not have the opportunity to shoot, and the actors were left without work.
The idea of the film came from Karen Shakhnazarov back in 1993. As the director later admitted, the idea was inspired by the events of his own life. He was able to tell about this drama only 20 years later, and even then he was very reluctant. As it turned out, in 1989, shortly before filming began, the director parted ways with his wife, TV presenter Elena Setunskaya. They met when he was 31 years old and got married 2 months after they met. This was his second marriage - the first did not last even a year. The couple had a daughter, Anyuta, named after the mother of Karen Shakhnazarov. He lived with Elena Setunskaya for 6 years, after which she and her four-year-old daughter suddenly disappeared.
In 1989, the director returned from the Cannes Film Festival and did not find his wife, daughter, or their belongings in the house. The note left did not clarify the situation in any way - it said that Elena decided to show her daughter Disneyland and was leaving for the USA. Then he could not explain to himself this act of his wife and did not even imagine that they had left forever, and that he would be able to see his daughter only after 20 years. Later he admitted that he was cheating on his wife and, perhaps, this was the reason for such a decision.
At that time, it was very difficult to leave the USSR for the United States, although in the late 1980s. it was no longer an insoluble problem. However, it took a long time to prepare the travel documents. Shakhnazarov realized that his wife had planned her escape in advance, having thought through all the details of her daughter's abduction. At that time, it was impossible to find a wife in the United States, and after the collapse of the USSR, he considered that this was no longer worth doing. In 1994, for 3 months, the director lived and worked in the United States, but did not attempt to find his daughter.
He later learned that Setunskaya had married a Hollywood producer and changed her last name. And only in 2009, Shakhnazarov finally saw his daughter. Then he presented in New York his work "Ward No. 6", nominated for "Oscar". The daughter herself found him and called, offering to meet. The director was struck by the fact that she grew up to be 100 percent American and spoke Russian with difficulty. He was forced to admit that he would never be able to restore an emotional connection with her, since she became a stranger, and her outlook on life was radically different from his own.
Karen Shakhnazarov never spoke about the blow to his wife's flight. Probably, he threw out all his emotions in the film "American Daughter", where the hero of Vladimir Mashkov goes to America in search of his daughter, kidnapped by his wife, who fled from him to a rich American.
Karen Shakhnazarov has reached considerable heights in his professional activity, he has become a world famous director and director of Mosfilm. However, his personal life was not so successful. He was married three times, but all three marriages fell apart. Shakhnakharov admits: "". The director claims that the greatest passion in his life was and remains cinema - perhaps that is why he never managed to achieve harmony in his family life.
No less interesting is the story of another picture by Karen Shakhnazarov, which became a cult film of the 1980s. Behind the scenes of "Courier": what happened to the actors who played the main roles.
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