Kirill Serebrennikov's Leto (2018) is having its exclusive online premiere on Mubi in the United Kingdom. It is showing from August 16 - September 14, 2019.A constrained, silenced audience claps along to electric guitars and drums that produce distinctively rock and roll tunes. Young men only dare to tap rhythmically with their toes, while the one attempt for fangirls to lift up a love-heart poster is hushed in seconds. As the camera glides past the band into the audience, the lead raises his voice only slightly to deliver the chorus finale: “You’re trash!” Amidst the loud bangs on cymbals and the bass riffs, something both cynical and liberating is taking form on stage: a chronotope, a lifestyle, Soviet rock and roll, a love story. In Leto fact meets fiction in reconstructing a time (1980s) and space (Leningrad) in a nostalgic manner, to tell the story of Russian idol Viktor Tsoi and...
- 8/15/2019
- MUBI
Rock and rebellion share identical DNA. From adolescent angst to organized resistance, the music genre has sung backup vocals to more than a few social uprisings in its time. Accompanied by its promises of fame, recklessness, and freedom, rock embodies a lifestyle many seek to lead, and as such, the dream of becoming the prototypical “rockstar” endures to this day.
Read More: The Best Films Of 2019… So Far
However, for Mike Naumenko (Roman Bilyk) and Viktor Tsoy (Teo Yoo), the lifestyle of a Russian musician was far from the fantasy of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll.
Continue reading ‘Leto’: This Russian Rock And Roll Biopic Hits All The Wrong Notes [Review] at The Playlist.
Read More: The Best Films Of 2019… So Far
However, for Mike Naumenko (Roman Bilyk) and Viktor Tsoy (Teo Yoo), the lifestyle of a Russian musician was far from the fantasy of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll.
Continue reading ‘Leto’: This Russian Rock And Roll Biopic Hits All The Wrong Notes [Review] at The Playlist.
- 6/13/2019
- by Jonathan Christian
- The Playlist
Penned by Michael and Lily Idov, Leto is a wistful and seductive look at the relationship between a young Viktor Tsoi (Teo Yoo) and musician Mike Naumenko (Roman Bilyk). Mike, a more seasoned artist, believes in and nurtures Viktor’s potential. When Mike’s partner Natasha (Irina Starshenbaum) becomes smitten with Viktor, Mike stands aside and lets [...]
The post Love and Friendship Solidifies The Epic Musical Fantasy Of ‘Leto’ appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.
The post Love and Friendship Solidifies The Epic Musical Fantasy Of ‘Leto’ appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.
- 6/6/2019
- by Hollywood Outbreak
- HollywoodOutbreak.com
Leningrad, the early 1980s: the Soviet Union’s stranglehold on its citizens continues, glasnost is not even a glimmer in Gorbachev’s eye and it feels as if the Party will never end. The one thing that does seem to be thriving, however, is the city’s underground rock scene, albeit one with a crowd stifled by authoritarian apparatchiks. (A fan tries to hold up a homemade sign for her favorite rock band. A man in a suit shuts down this oh-so-revolutionary action down Asap.) The applause-ometer may never allowed...
- 6/5/2019
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
While we gear up for Cannes Film Festival (see our most-anticipated films here), a few of last year’s premieres are still looking for a U.S. release. One that recently got picked up was the Soviet-set rock ‘n’ roll drama Leto, from controversial director Kirill Serebrennikov, who was under house arrest in Moscow due to being accused of embezzling $2 million of government funds. His 80s-set counterculture film, acquired by Gunpowder & Sky, will get a release next month and now the U.S. trailer and poster have arrived.
Ed Frankl said in our review, “At a time when freedom of expression titters on the brink in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, there’s something thrillingly contemporary about Kirill Serebrennikov’s Soviet-set musical drama. Early 1980s St. Petersburg proves a breeding ground of underground music as rebellion, however tacit, emerges in home-grown rock and punk. Leto’s melancholic ode to rough-and-ready...
Ed Frankl said in our review, “At a time when freedom of expression titters on the brink in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, there’s something thrillingly contemporary about Kirill Serebrennikov’s Soviet-set musical drama. Early 1980s St. Petersburg proves a breeding ground of underground music as rebellion, however tacit, emerges in home-grown rock and punk. Leto’s melancholic ode to rough-and-ready...
- 5/14/2019
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Leto! Gunpowder & Sky has debuted an official Us trailer for the indie Russian film Leto, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year to some rave reviews. This also went on to play at lots of other festivals throughout last year, from Karlovy Vary to Vienna and more. Leto, directed by filmmaker & theater director Kirill Serebrennikov who was under house arrest for the last year, is based on the true story of Viktor Tsoy and his band called Kino. The title translates to Summer, and the film is shot in black & white, evoking an old school feeling taking us back to the 70s & 80s. It's an awesome, groovy rock film with some incredible musical sequences that you just have to see on the big screen. Teo Yoo stars as Viktor Tsoy, and the main cast features Irina Starshenbaum, Roman Bilyk, Anton Adasinsky, Yuliya Aug, & Filipp Avdeev. This was one...
- 5/9/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Near the end of shooting “Leto,” his followup to breakout drama “The Student,” Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov was arrested, charged with embezzling $2 million in state funds from a Moscow-area avant-garde theater he runs, and ultimately placed under house arrest pending trial. Serebrennikov still finished the film, which was then accepted into Cannes’ Competition section, where it screened last May without its filmmaker in attendance.
That Serebrennikov’s arrest — he was just freed mere weeks ago, and is pushing for a full acquittal — came at the hands of a government that isn’t too hip to his outspoken anti-Kremlin views should give anyone pause as to its motivations, as should the content of the film he was making when the hammer came down on him. As with much of Serebrennikov’s work, it’s a film that makes plenty of veiled jabs at modern Russian life under Vladimir Putin’s rule,...
That Serebrennikov’s arrest — he was just freed mere weeks ago, and is pushing for a full acquittal — came at the hands of a government that isn’t too hip to his outspoken anti-Kremlin views should give anyone pause as to its motivations, as should the content of the film he was making when the hammer came down on him. As with much of Serebrennikov’s work, it’s a film that makes plenty of veiled jabs at modern Russian life under Vladimir Putin’s rule,...
- 5/8/2019
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Cold WarDear Danny, Given that Loznitsa’s A Gentle Creature was perhaps the most unfairly dismissed entry in last year’s competition, I’m glad to hear that Donbass proved rewarding. I missed it myself, having spent most of the third day trekking down the Croisette to the Quinzaine des réalisateurs (Directors' Fortnight) and the Semaine de la Critique (Critics' Week) festivals, the latter of which offered little worth discussing thus far. Still, I'm glad I made the short journey, since the two Quinzaine selections were challenging and compelling in ways I hadn't anticipated. But let's start with two competitions entries, both of which turned out to be quasi-musicals of a sort. The first: Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto (Summer), centered around the burgeoning underground scene of the Leningrad Rock Club in the early 1980s—“a cardboard England in a Baltic swamp," as Mike (Roman Bilyk), the popular frontman of one...
- 5/20/2018
- MUBI
In competition in Cannes this year is Russian director and festival darling (Betrayal was in competition in Venice in 2012) Kirill Serebrennikov. Though the film is in black-and-white, it is full of vibrant colour.
The film opens with a group of girls entering a gig backstage, up ladders and fire escapes via the men’s loos. We could be almost anywhere, at any time, the black-and-white taking us back to the 1960s. So far, so global. But once inside the venue, we are soon made aware of the differences between audiences on either side of the Iron Curtain: everyone is seated, toes are surreptitiously tapped, and standing up or waving posters are strictly policed and forbidden. Welcome to Leningrad circa 1981.
The band on stage is led by the charismatic Mike (Roman Bilyk). He loves Marc Bolan, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and of course David Bowie. New music is seeping into the...
The film opens with a group of girls entering a gig backstage, up ladders and fire escapes via the men’s loos. We could be almost anywhere, at any time, the black-and-white taking us back to the 1960s. So far, so global. But once inside the venue, we are soon made aware of the differences between audiences on either side of the Iron Curtain: everyone is seated, toes are surreptitiously tapped, and standing up or waving posters are strictly policed and forbidden. Welcome to Leningrad circa 1981.
The band on stage is led by the charismatic Mike (Roman Bilyk). He loves Marc Bolan, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and of course David Bowie. New music is seeping into the...
- 5/11/2018
- by Jo-Ann Titmarsh
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
On a long enough timeline, every rock scene of the 20th century will get the requiem it deserves. Manchester got “24 Hour Party People,” the American Midwest got “Almost Famous,” and now the Leningrad underground gets Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Leto,” which is as much an impressionist portrait of the Soviet Union on the brink of Perestroika as it is an elegiac tribute to the singing revolutionaries who helped pave the way. The film is all too happy to fudge some of the details and get a bit cute with the classics (often taking a sledgehammer directly to the fourth wall), but its freewheeling spirit results in an ecstatic look back at a brief window of time between oppressions. It’s a shambling, transportive, and semi-tragic story about a fleeting past where anything seemed possible.
Serebrennikov — whose 2016 breakthrough “The Student” was also obliquely critical of Russia’s current regime — doesn’t...
Serebrennikov — whose 2016 breakthrough “The Student” was also obliquely critical of Russia’s current regime — doesn’t...
- 5/10/2018
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
If you don’t count Wednesday night’s screening of “Black Panther” on the beach, the most fun to be had watching movies at this year’s Cannes Film Festival might well have come early in Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Leto,” when a train full of disaffected young musicians terrorize their more sedate passengers with a full-throated version of the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.”
Or 40 minutes or so later, when a busload of commuters breaks into Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger.”
Like the film itself, those sequences are energetic, messy, a little surreal and wholly enjoyable, a tribute to the power of rock ‘n’ roll to shake things up while also providing good fun.
Also Read: 16 Cannes Winners That Went on to Take Oscar Gold (Photos)
“Leto,” which premiered on Wednesday night and screened for the press on Thursday morning, is the wildest and most bracing film to screen in the main competition so far this year. Part fond remembrance of an early-’80s Leningrad rock scene and part glam-rock fever dream, “Leto” asks an audience to surrender to excess and at times to silliness, and it richly rewards them for doing so.
Serebrennikov is one of two main-competition directors who is not allowed by authorities in his home country to come to the festival, the other being Iran’s Jafar Panahi. He has been under house arrest for almost a year on fraud accusations, though his supporters say it’s a trumped-up charge by a Russian government that wants to punish him for his art.
There’s a current of anti-government sentiment running through “Leto” in the way its musicians can’t play the government-supported Leningrad Music Club until their lyrics have been approved by a stern censor who tells them, “Soviet rock musicians must find all that’s good in humanity.” When they do play, stern guards watch over the audience to make sure they don’t stand up, move or do anything but applaud politely.
Also Read: 'Donbass' Review: Jarring War Film Reminds Us That No One Is Safe
But that’s not the focus of the film, which is based on the life of Soviet rock musician Viktor Tsoi, who was a legendary figure in his home country but is largely unknown outside Russia. To those who aren’t familiar with Tsoi’s music, “Leto” works as a more universal story of striving and of rock ‘n’ roll dreams.
Tsoi, played by Tee Yoo, is introduced as he makes a pilgrimage to see established local musician Mike (Roman Bilyk), the leader of a band and a community of misfits whose idols are David Bowie, Lou Reed and T-Rex’s Marc Bolan. They pay lip service to punk music, but they’re really glam-rockers at heart.
Serebrennikov doesn’t go full glam with the film, though. For the most part, “Leto” is shot in lustrous black and white that can seem gritty at times but more often turns the film into a rock ‘n’ roll reverie, a fever dream born of “Aladdin Sane” and “The Velvet Underground and Nico” (and occasionally accompanied by onscreen animation in a number of terrific fantasy sequences).
Also Read: Terry Gilliam's 'Don Quixote' Loses Amazon as Us Distributor, Wins Court Fight to Screen as Cannes Closer
Tee Yoo, a Korean actor who learned Russian phonetically for the film, is suitably enigmatic as the gifted man at the center of a dizzying movement, while Bilyk is touching as the young rebel trying to adjust to the fact that he’s become an elder statesman of sorts.
At heart, this is a story of musicians who are dealing with several layers of frustration — cultural, artistic, personal — but manage to break through, one way or another. There’s a love triangle of sorts, as Viktor flirts with and falls for Mike’s wife, Natasha (a quietly compelling Irina Stashenbaum), but the heart of the film is in the songs, both Tsoi’s own music and Western tunes like “Psycho Killer,” Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” (used in a priceless bus sequence) and a ghostly, hallucinatory version of the hit Bowie gave to Mott the Hoople, “All the Young Dudes.”
A mocking line from that last song essentially serves as the theme of this film: “Oh man, I need TV when I got T-Rex?” These people didn’t need Soviet TV, they did have T-Rex, and for a while it was glorious — though as the end of the film points out the ones among them who died young, the glory is tinged with deep melancholy.
Like rock ‘n’ roll itself, “Leto” aims to be great and doesn’t worry about being messy. Unlike anything else at Cannes so far this year, it cranks the dial to 11 and is all the better for it.
Read original story ‘Leto’ Film Review: Musical Biopic Is a Rock ‘n’ Roll Fever Dream At TheWrap...
Or 40 minutes or so later, when a busload of commuters breaks into Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger.”
Like the film itself, those sequences are energetic, messy, a little surreal and wholly enjoyable, a tribute to the power of rock ‘n’ roll to shake things up while also providing good fun.
Also Read: 16 Cannes Winners That Went on to Take Oscar Gold (Photos)
“Leto,” which premiered on Wednesday night and screened for the press on Thursday morning, is the wildest and most bracing film to screen in the main competition so far this year. Part fond remembrance of an early-’80s Leningrad rock scene and part glam-rock fever dream, “Leto” asks an audience to surrender to excess and at times to silliness, and it richly rewards them for doing so.
Serebrennikov is one of two main-competition directors who is not allowed by authorities in his home country to come to the festival, the other being Iran’s Jafar Panahi. He has been under house arrest for almost a year on fraud accusations, though his supporters say it’s a trumped-up charge by a Russian government that wants to punish him for his art.
There’s a current of anti-government sentiment running through “Leto” in the way its musicians can’t play the government-supported Leningrad Music Club until their lyrics have been approved by a stern censor who tells them, “Soviet rock musicians must find all that’s good in humanity.” When they do play, stern guards watch over the audience to make sure they don’t stand up, move or do anything but applaud politely.
Also Read: 'Donbass' Review: Jarring War Film Reminds Us That No One Is Safe
But that’s not the focus of the film, which is based on the life of Soviet rock musician Viktor Tsoi, who was a legendary figure in his home country but is largely unknown outside Russia. To those who aren’t familiar with Tsoi’s music, “Leto” works as a more universal story of striving and of rock ‘n’ roll dreams.
Tsoi, played by Tee Yoo, is introduced as he makes a pilgrimage to see established local musician Mike (Roman Bilyk), the leader of a band and a community of misfits whose idols are David Bowie, Lou Reed and T-Rex’s Marc Bolan. They pay lip service to punk music, but they’re really glam-rockers at heart.
Serebrennikov doesn’t go full glam with the film, though. For the most part, “Leto” is shot in lustrous black and white that can seem gritty at times but more often turns the film into a rock ‘n’ roll reverie, a fever dream born of “Aladdin Sane” and “The Velvet Underground and Nico” (and occasionally accompanied by onscreen animation in a number of terrific fantasy sequences).
Also Read: Terry Gilliam's 'Don Quixote' Loses Amazon as Us Distributor, Wins Court Fight to Screen as Cannes Closer
Tee Yoo, a Korean actor who learned Russian phonetically for the film, is suitably enigmatic as the gifted man at the center of a dizzying movement, while Bilyk is touching as the young rebel trying to adjust to the fact that he’s become an elder statesman of sorts.
At heart, this is a story of musicians who are dealing with several layers of frustration — cultural, artistic, personal — but manage to break through, one way or another. There’s a love triangle of sorts, as Viktor flirts with and falls for Mike’s wife, Natasha (a quietly compelling Irina Stashenbaum), but the heart of the film is in the songs, both Tsoi’s own music and Western tunes like “Psycho Killer,” Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” (used in a priceless bus sequence) and a ghostly, hallucinatory version of the hit Bowie gave to Mott the Hoople, “All the Young Dudes.”
A mocking line from that last song essentially serves as the theme of this film: “Oh man, I need TV when I got T-Rex?” These people didn’t need Soviet TV, they did have T-Rex, and for a while it was glorious — though as the end of the film points out the ones among them who died young, the glory is tinged with deep melancholy.
Like rock ‘n’ roll itself, “Leto” aims to be great and doesn’t worry about being messy. Unlike anything else at Cannes so far this year, it cranks the dial to 11 and is all the better for it.
Read original story ‘Leto’ Film Review: Musical Biopic Is a Rock ‘n’ Roll Fever Dream At TheWrap...
- 5/10/2018
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
Filmmakers working in the rock music realm often have a fine needle to thread: When portraying a world of self-indulgence, how closely can they enter into the spirit of things before becoming self-indulgent themselves? In “Leto,” his sprawling, chaotically shaped ode to the underground Leningrad rock scene of the 1980s, gifted Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov only sporadically finds the sweet spot, landing on stray moments of both human tenderness and musical euphoria in a bemusing blizzard of assorted characters, styles and songs that often tips over into outright kitsch. Embellishing with numerous fictional details the true story of influential, tragically short-lived Soviet singer-songwriter Viktor Tsoi, “Leto” happily avoids the bland structural pitfalls of the musical biopic, but also provides outsiders with few entry points to its rather niche milieu. The scene is the star here, and Serebrennikov is more concerned that we experience it than understand it.
That conflicting blend...
That conflicting blend...
- 5/10/2018
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.