Petrópolis (film)

Production

Valery Fokin, a prominent Russian theater director, returned to filmmaking after roughly two decades to direct Petrópolis. The movie adapts the novel Fire, written by his son Kirill Fokin and published in 2016 by Veche. That same year, the story was staged at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, and later inspired a play titled Today. 2016 - .... Production companies Revolution Film and Interfest backed the project, with support from the Russian Ministry of Culture.

Principal photography started in August 2020 in Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast region. Most of the filming occurred in Moscow during August and September 2020 inside a 6,800-square-meter indoor karting center pavilion on the grounds of the Moscow Pipe Plant FILIT. There, the largest set ever built for Russian cinema at that time was constructed, merging locations from St. Petersburg, Miami, and Tokyo into one unified scenery. On the former pipe plant site, around twenty different settings were created to represent three countries: Russia, America, and Japan.

These included not only interiors like houses and offices, but also streets, boulevards, sidewalks, cafes, restaurants, and even a beachfront villa in Miami. That villa comes from the memories of the character Ognev, a place where he once lived happily with his wife. Because the space reflects Vladimir’s recollections, some parts of the set are realistic while others are painted directly onto the walls. Fokin devised this blend of cinematic and theatrical techniques alongside the artist Aleksey Tregubov.