Poster from TMDB
Russian Ark
Sign in to saveAlso known as Russkij Kovcheg, Russky kovcheg
2002 fictional historical film by Alexander Sokurov filmed in the Winter Palace in one take without stopping the camera
Film · TMDB
7.2A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.
Cast
- Sergey Dreyden as Marquis de Custine
- Mariya Kuznetsova as Catherine The Great
- Leonid Mozgovoy as The Spy
- Mikhail Piotrovsky as Hermitage director
- Edisher (Davit) Giorgobiani as Orbeli
- Aleksandr Chaban as Boris Piotrovsky
Themes
- museum
- time travel
- st. petersburg, russia
- russian history
- one take
This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
Ratings
IMDb
7.2/10
22,084 votes
Rotten Tomatoes
89%
Metacritic
87/100
- Year
- 2002
- Runtime
- 99 min
- Genres
- Drama, Fantasy, History
- Rated
- Not Rated
- Awards
- 10 wins & 15 nominations
via OMDb · IMDb
Key facts
- Directed by
- Alexander Sokurov
- Written by
- Anatoli Nikiforov, Alexander Sokurov
- Produced by
- Andrey Deryabin, Jens Meurer, Karsten Stöter
- Starring
- Alexander Sokurov Sergey Dreyden Mariya Kuznetsova Maksim Sergeyev Anna Aleksakhina Vladimir Baranov
- Narrated by
- Alexander Sokurov
- Cinematography
- Tilman Büttner
- Edited by
- Stefan Ciupek, Sergei Ivanov, Betina Kuntzsch, Patrick Wilfert
- Music by
- Sergei Yevtushenko
- Production company
- Seville Pictures
- Distributed by
- Wellspring Media
- Release dates
- 22 May 2002 ( 2002-05-22 ) ( Cannes ) 19 April 2003 ( 2003-04-19 ) (Russia) 1 May 2003 ( 2003-05-01 ) (Germany)
- Running time
- 96 minutes
- Countries
- Russia Germany Canada Finland Denmark
- Languages
- Russian Persian
- Budget
- ~$2.5 million
- Box office
- $8.7 million
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Duration
- 99
- FilmAffinity ID
- 734026
Show 6 more facts
- publication date
- 2003-02-22
- average shot length
- 96
- title
- Русский ковчег
- review score
- 87/100
- Commons category
- Russian Ark
- box office
- 8700000
Sources (12)
via Wikidata · CC0
~9 min read
Article
Russian Ark (Russian: Русский ковчег, romanized: Russkij kovcheg) is a 2002 experimental historical drama film directed by Alexander Sokurov. The plot follows an unnamed narrator, who wanders through the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, and implies that he died in some horrible accident and is a ghost drifting through. In each room, he encounters various real and fictional people from various periods in the city's 300-year history. He is accompanied by "the European", who represents the Marquis de Custine, a 19th-century French traveler.
An international co-production between Russia and Germany, Russian Ark was shot entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum on 23 December 2001, using a one-take single 87-minute Steadicam sequence shot. It extensively uses the fourth wall device, but repeatedly broken and re-erected. At times, the narrator and the companion interact with the other performers, while at other times they pass unnoticed.