Interview - Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie: Let's talk director Kirillov Serebrennikov

By Sabine, Paris, Hotel Bel Ami, 25 november 2024

The film Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie traces the tumultuous and fascinating life of Edouard Limonov, writer, dissident and controversial figure on the Russian political and cultural scene. Through an immersive mise-en-scène and a sensitive eye, director Kirill Serebrennikov explores the multiple facets of this complex man, navigating between literary glory, exile and radical ideological commitment. This intimate yet captivating portrait invites us to reflect on the tensions between artistic creation and political positioning, offering a unique insight into an extraordinary character. A round-table discussion with the director allowed us to delve behind the scenes of this rich and nuanced work, and better understand the choices that shaped this cinematic narrative.

Q: Why Limonov ?

Kirill Serebrennikov: I received a proposal from Italian producers to adapt Emmanuel Carrère's book. It was 2020 when I first heard about this project. It's a project that took a very long time to see the light of day, that has had a very long life. We started it in Moscow before the war, then the war (in Ukraine) intervened. The project was interrupted for six months, and at one point we even thought we wouldn't be able to resume shooting. In the end, we all left and ended up shooting again, but in Europe. As a result, the film has a very complex biography, just like that of the main character.

Q: Why didn't you deal more with the end of his life and his evolution towards fascism ?

Kirill Serebrennikov: Well, we do talk about it, we're there in the last part. But I must insist on the fact that the party itself, the National-Bolshevik Party, is banned, and even mentioning it is forbidden in Russia. As it happens, the final scene - you know, in cinema, you don't shoot in chronological order - in the bunker, we shot in Moscow. So we were already trying to see how we could show what was forbidden to be shown. Obviously, since I had this in mind and had written the script before the war, it influenced the way we made the film. We weren't even allowed to show the real emblem of the National-Bolshevik Party - it's completely forbidden. We knew that if we had shown it, we could all have been arrested on location. And then, what interested me more was the part about emigration, about this loss of love. In any case, even in Emmanuel Carrère's book, he doesn't recount Limonov's life to the end. The book stops at the turn of the 2000s. Obviously, this is not Limonov's complete life. Nevertheless, once again, given the ban on mentioning the National-Bolshevik Party, I didn't go there.

Q: How did you choose the lead actor to play such a complex character ?

Kirill Serebrennikov: You know, at one point we decided to make the film in English, because it's an international project. It's an Italian film based on a French book, with a Russian director, so we had to find a good actor. On the other hand, I'd been dreaming of working with Ben Whishaw for a very long time. What's more, he really looked like him. I knew he could be Limonov, that he reminded me of the character's prototype. We did some tests, but as soon as the tests were over, I knew I was going to cast him.

Q: You worked as an intimacy coordinator for the sex scenes. Was this your intention? What do you think of this new profession ?

Kirill Serebrennikov: At first, this intimacy coordinator thing put me off a bit, if I may say so, because I said to myself: “But what's the point of having someone else in control? There's me, there's the actors.” Then, I have to tell you, I understood the importance of that, and I enjoyed it. It just so happened that the person who was in charge of this on the set was an absolutely super girl, who was cheerful, joyful and extremely professional, very intelligent. She never got in the way of the direction. I suppose it also depends on who's coming on set, but in this case it was easy, and we had absolutely no problems with it. The first day of shooting was the sex scene between Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Ben Whishaw. They hardly knew each other, and we had to start with that. So that could have been a problem, but it wasn't. If every time I need a coordinator, it's at this professional level, that's fine. If, sometimes, you run the risk of running into an idiot, that could make things more complex. But so far, my experience has been positive.

Q: You're a multidisciplinary artist, working in film, opera and theater. How does this cross-disciplinary approach enrich your creative work ?

Kirill Serebrennikov: The question is extremely difficult and extremely profound, and I don't have an answer, not even for myself. I don't draw the line, if you like, between these three art forms. For me, it's like rivers that cross, then separate and sometimes cross again, or sometimes not. On the one hand, opera and cinema are for me the two arts that are closest to each other. For me, cinema and theater are really very different things. When I was young, I already did a bit of theater, but I always dreamed of making films. In fact, that's what I wanted to do. It's just that I've always wondered: what does a film director do between two films? Because sometimes three or four years go by between two films. What do these people do? No one has been able to answer my question. The only intelligent answer I've heard is, “Well, they must be looking for money.” I said to myself, “No, it's not possible to spend three years looking for money.” So, in fact, I tried to do everything I could to never do anything, to always be busy doing something. As for the cinema, it was he who found me. In fact, I said “ok” to a number of proposals. People have come and brought me books. They weren't necessarily films I'd always dreamed of bringing to the screen, just proposals for film adaptations of texts written by others, and I've always been happy with that. Once again, I've always wanted to be a film director. Now, for example, I'm going to make my first film in French from a script I wrote myself. It's really an original project. Maybe it'll be great, maybe it'll be crap, I don't know. But in any case, it's the first time I'm going to adapt something I've written myself, and I'm delighted that for the first time it's a film in French.

Q: Your visual style has often been described as provocative and daring. How did you approach directing to capture the essence of a man like Limonov ?

Kirill Serebrennikov: First of all, I must say that I'm absolutely delighted to hear you talk about mise en scène. I think it's absolutely great, especially that you use that word. I find it an extremely rich lexicon, and I'm delighted that, when you talk about the way I make films, you talk about mise en scène. I have to say that, to find out how to make this film about this rather strange character, I first thought that Limonov was a poet and that I had to find an equivalent to his poetry. That's why I went for sequence shots, news footage and editing. And all this, for me, makes a poetic collage, a collage linked to poetry. So I had to find a poetic form and a poetic language to render the poetry of this man.

Q: The film took several years to make because of the outbreak of war in Ukraine. How did you manage to stay on course all those years ?

Kirill Serebrennikov: You know, I did make a film about Dr. Mengele. I hope the film will be released soon. So, in the meantime, while it was indeed - you're right - something difficult, something very long, I managed to make another film because, in any case, I had no choice.

Q: There's a magnificent sequence shot of Ben Whishaw crossing the streets of New York. Was this shot first thought of with Lou Reed's music in mind ?

Kirill Serebrennikov: No, I suppose not. I imagined the staging first, and the music came later. On the other hand, when we shot the scene, we shot it listening to that music, because I knew that, in that sequence, it would be that music. But the staging was imagined independently of the music. The music provides the rhythm, the speed of movement. We sometimes had problems with the rights to the song. We'd tried with another one, and I could feel that it wasn't right, that the rhythm wasn't right. I needed something that was like a ballet, if you like. So what was left to do? Either have a score written specifically for that speed, or buy the rights. In the end, we managed to acquire them.

Q: What were the main challenges in recreating the different moods of his exile in New York and his return to Russia ?

Kirill Serebrennikov: Trying to recreate the New York of 1975, when none of us had ever lived there, was actually quite crazy. We just had images in our heads. It was extremely difficult to recreate all that. It was a real challenge, one I'd compare to Denis Villeneuve's Dune, in fact. Denis Villeneuve invented something, and we invented the New York of 1975. To do this, I saw miles of newsreel footage where I wanted to see the city: how it was made, how people were dressed. I needed a big enough set, because there were several city blocks in the set, and I knew it would be something extremely dirty. There were rats at the time, garbage cans in the streets because of a strike. Windows were broken, public transport didn't work. People even came to the set and asked us, “Couldn't you make it a little cleaner?” And I said no, because in the newsreels, it wasn't possible. The sets were built from the news footage I'd seen. It was very difficult because, for me, the artists had to play in the set. The artists also played against a green background so that they could include news footage and special effects. All this was very important.

Q: The film could really lend itself to a serial structure, given the chaptering you've given. I had this question: do you intend to tackle new forms of narrative experimentation in your next films? And I also wanted to know what stage you're at in adapting The Phantom of the Opera into a series. Are you interested in the series ?

Kirill Serebrennikov: I'll start at the end. The Phantom of the Opera is indeed in development today. Regarding your first question, on the serial aspect, in fact, a series for Limonov... Yes, we did think about it. It might have lent itself to it, because these are different eras, and his image is changing. I think there will be a series about Limonov, but it will probably be made by Russian propagandists, because he's an absolutely sacred figure in Russia. So, maybe one day this series will see the light of day. In any case, as far as narrative forms are concerned, I try to give each film its own form. What I like is to make different films. I think every film needs its own form. I always start from scratch every time I make a film, because I understand that every film has to be different. It's a bit like Kubrick: when you take Kubrick's films, each time he finds a different form. I'm sure that for every subject 
there's a different form.

Q: Is there anything you'd like to tell us about this film that we haven't already covered ?

Kirill Serebrennikov: You know, I find that when a director starts saying things, there's a kind of abuse of an almost dominant position. I've made my film, and I sincerely hope that viewers will go and see it. For me, that's the most important thing: they'll interpret my film for themselves. What I wanted to say, I said on screen. So, if there are things missing that I haven't said, they'll be in my next film. I have nothing more to say about this one. I often think that a director would do better, sometimes, to keep his mouth shut. We're given extremely important means to express ourselves, and I'm happy with that.

Kirill Serebrennikov is a Russian director and playwright renowned for his bold, avant-garde approach. A key figure on the contemporary art scene, he has made a name for himself with works that question social, political and cultural norms, often breaking taboos. His distinctive style blends powerful visual aesthetics with narrative depth, whether in film, theater or opera. Despite the pressures and controversies he has faced in his homeland, notably due to his opposition to censorship and his commitment to artistic freedom, Kirill Serebrennikov has succeeded in imposing his unique voice on the international scene. His works, such as Leto and Petrov's Fever, reflect a vision of the world that is both poetic and provocative, making him a key figure in committed art.

Synopsis:
Revolutionary activist, dandy, rogue, butler or homeless man, he was at once an enraged and bellicose poet, a political agitator and the novelist of his own greatness. The life of Eduard Limonov, like a trail of sulfur, is a ballad through the turbulent streets of Moscow and the skyscrapers of New York, from the back alleys of Paris to the heart of the gaols of Siberia during the second half of the 20th century.

Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie
Directed by Kirill Serebrennikov
Written by Kirill Serebrennikov, Ben Hopkins, Pawel Pawlikowski
Freely adapted from the novel Limonov by Emmanuel Carrère
Produced by Ardavan Safaee, Lorenzo Gangarossa, Mario Gianani, Dimitri Rassam, Ilya Stewart
Starring Ben Whishaw, Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Tomas Arana, Corrado Invernizzi, Evgeniy Mironov, Andrey Burkovskiy, Maria Mashkova, Sandrine Bonnaire, Emmanuel Carrère, Céline Sallette, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing
Director of photography : Roman Vasyanov
Editing: Yurii Karikh
Music: Massimo Pupillo
Production company: Wildside, Chapter 2, Fremantle Spain, France 3 Cinéma, Hype Studios
Distributed by Pathé (France)
Release dates: May 19, 2024 (Cannes Film Festival), December 4, 2024 (France)
Running time: 137 minutes

Photos and video : Sabine Chevrier / Mulderville