Kira Muratova finished shooting of a new movie

The filming took place in Odessa and Kyiv. The intended title for the feature is “The melody for barrel organ”. The movie goes about adventures and trials of two waifs played by 12-year debutant Olena Kostyuk and 8-year Roma Burlaka.

Thus the shooting took place as usual for Mrs. Muratova in Odessa but for the first time in Kyiv. The sad Christmas tale about the fate of orphaned children united the Kyivan dramatist Volodymyr Zuyev and the master of psychological paradigm Kira Muratova with a whole pleiad of professionals. Mrs. Muratova’s favorite constellation of actors – Renat Litvinov, Oleg Tabakov, Nina Ruslanova and Natalya Buzko - has become a filigree framing for the brother and sister story played by 12-year Olena Kostyuk and 8-year Roma Burlaka.

According to Oleg Kohan, the producer of the film (Sota Cinema Group), the audience will know whether Renat Litvinov’s magic fairy make happy the orphaned boy found for her by her beloved man played by Oleg Tabakov; and whether  the heroes manage to find their parents, at the end of 2008.

Nina Ruslanova, actress: “Working with such a director as Kira Muratova I’m always surprised by her inexhaustible imagination and get a premonition of an original solution every time. “The melody for barrel organ” has not become exclusion. This time Kira Georgiyivna fitted for me a part of a cheerful railway station baggage”.

Volodymyr Goryanskiy, actor: “A part of filming period taken place in Kyiv we spent at the railway station which became for me like a symbol of a great world where you feel so lonely and in the everyday vanity no one responds to call for help. Besides the shooting area had such atmosphere where you could hear just the melody for barrel organ ringing absolutely unusually, in Muratova-like manner”.

Ruslana Pysanka, actress: “This is my first experience of work with Kira Muratova, and if I were asked to tell in several words about the shooting I would say it was “quickly and professionally”. The working on the images at the preliminary stage was so thorough that I had an impression that while shooting all participants of the process, from the actors to the cameraman, just impeccably fulfill the plan having not gone improvising as it often happens. When you work with Mrs. Muratova you realize well what Rene Clair called “The film’s ready we just need to make it”. And when such a director as Kira Georhiyivna offers a new vision of you as an actress you have several stimulus at once, and that inspires much”.

Director: Kira Muratova.

Producer: Oleg Kohan

Director of Photography: Volodymyr Pankov

Actors: Olena Kostyuk, Roma Burlaka, Renata Litvinova, Oleg Tabakov, Nina Ruslanova, Georgiy Deliyev, Natalya Buzko.

Shooting period: Nov. 07 – Feb. 08

Movie Shooting Budget: 11.3 million UAH

Production: Sota Cinema Group with the assistance of Ministry for Culture and Tourism of Ukraine