''Buddha's Little Finger'' is an English-language feature film directed by Tony Pemberton and starring

Toby Kebbell Tobias Alistair Patrick Kebbell''Births, Marriages & Deaths: Toby is married to Arielle Wyatt. They got married in 2020 and they have one child together. Index of England & Wales, 1916–2005.''; at ancestry.com (born 9 July 1982) is an English ...

. The screenplay is based on

Victor Pelevin Victor Olegovich Pelevin ( rus, Виктор Олегович Пелевин, p=ˈvʲiktər ɐˈlʲeɡəvʲɪtɕ pʲɪˈlʲevʲɪn; born 22 November 1962) is a Russian fiction writer. His novels include ''Omon Ra'' (1992), ''The Life of Insects' ...

's 1996 novel ''

Chapayev and Void ''Chapayev and Pustota'' (), known in the US as ''Buddha's Little Finger'' and in the UK as ''Clay Machine Gun'', is a 1996 novel by Victor Pelevin. It follows the dreams of three Moscow mental patients in the early 1990s, with the main protagoni ...

'', which is known in the US as ''Buddha's Little Finger'' and in the UK as ''Clay Machine Gun''. The genre of the film has been called

drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...

, psychological romance,

arthouse An art film, arthouse film, or specialty film is an independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made prima ...

, and

thriller Thriller may refer to: * Thriller (genre), a broad genre of literature, film and television ** Thriller film, a film genre under the general thriller genre Comics * ''Thriller'' (DC Comics), a comic book series published 1983–84 by DC Comics i ...

. It was released in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

on September 1, 2015.

Synopsis

Unemployed Russian poet Pyotr Voyd arrested by KGB during the 1991 Soviet August Coup, by tortures he loses consciousness and appears in 1919 post-revolutionary Russia, where he fights on the same side with the legendary Red cavalry commander Chapaev and his machine-gunner Anka. The strange memory lapses all the time throw him to the bandits' Moscow of nineties, then to the Russian Civil War back and forth, again and again.

Cast

as Pyotr Voyd *

André Hennicke André Hennicke (born 21 September 1958) is a German actor. He has appeared in more than one hundred films since 1984. Hennicke was born in Johanngeorgenstadt in Saxony. He was awarded a German television award for best actor for ''Something to ...

as Chapaev *

Karine Vanasse Karine Vanasse (, ; born 24 November 1983) is a Canadian actress, who had roles in the films '' Polytechnique'', '' Séraphin: Heart of Stone (Séraphin: un homme et son péché)'', ''Switch'' and '' Set Me Free (Emporte-moi)''. Internationally ...

as Anna * Yuki Iwamoto as Mongolian * Stipe Erceg as Volodin *

Ivan Shvedoff Ivan Shvedoff (; born 21 September 1969) is a Russian actor. Biography Shvedoff was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in the Russian SFSR. Shvedoff first started his acting career as a theater actor in the Theater of Youth Creativity ( ...

as Shurik * as Kolyan *

David Scheller David Scheller (born October 12, 1972) is a German actor. Since the early 1990s he appeared in many German TV- and film productions and also participated in a few international movies like ''Fay Grim'' or '' Extreme Ops''. In series and films D ...

as Zherbunov * as Barbolin *

Anne-Marie Cadieux Anne-Marie Cadieux (born September 23, 1963) is a Canadian actress, film director and screenwriter. She has won a Jutra Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in '' Streetheart (Le Cœur au poing)'' and in 2008 was nominated for a Genie A ...

as Timurovna *

Bernd Michael Lade Bernd Michael Lade (born 24 December 1964) is a German actor and director. A native of Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. ...

as Major Smirnov * as Mrs. Kuznets * Christoph Bach as Vorblei * as Kawabata *

Irshad Panjatan Irshad Panjatan (born 7 September 1931) is an Indian actor and veteran mime artist, based in Berlin, who introduced the art form to India during the 1960s. He started his career as stage actor, acted in few Bollywood films, and later received ac ...

as Buddha * Lilith Stangenberg as Blind Woman * as Lutze * Vincent Redetzki as Young Man * as Shabby Man * Axel Sichrovsky as Furmanov * as Pilgrim * Dominik Paul Weber as Kostrov * Jerry Gerom as Russian student

Crew

Production

Funding

In 2006 film was officially selected for the third

Berlinale The Berlin International Film Festival (), usually called the Berlinale (), is an annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europ ...

Co-Production Market. As

Mikheil Kalatozishvili Mikheil Kalatozishvili ( ka, მიხეილ კალატოზიშვილი; ; 19 May 1959 – 12 October 2009) was a Georgian-Russian film director, producer, and screenwriter active since the early 1980s. His 1991 film '' The Belove ...

early produced the film notes in 2008—2009, the filming start is delayed because of financial difficulties on the side of Western partners. In 2012 Tony Pemberton tells, that when Kalatozishvili died .

Title

The translation of Pelevin's novel by

Andrew Bromfield Andrew Bromfield is a British editor and translator of Russian works. He is a founding editor of the Russian literature journal ''Glas'', and has translated into English works by Boris Akunin, Vladimir Voinovich, Irina Denezhkina, Victor Pelevin, ...

for UK has name "", and for US — "". According to the translator he had invented the German name of the book — "", and as "The Clay Machine Gun" was less successful name, Americans had chosen their one. Pemberton's film has the same name.

Screenplay

As reported in 2011 by " Правда.Ру" screenplay was replenished with dungeons of Lubyanka and cannons firing at

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...

, though earlier was "planned" style of "incredible cocaine trip" with the respect to the original text. According to the film producer Karsten Stöter scenario was seriously adapted and interprets text of the original novel quite freely. Viktor Pelevin, according to the director, have read the script and responded positively, he said that he likes "115 pages out of 120, and with these 5 pages you have managed to almost destroy the whole story", so he wrote a number of his comments how to fix.

Shooting

Filming had planned to produce in Leipzig and Berlin. According to the director, he had to reduce the number of filming to 30 days, although earlier there were planned a 40-days filming, finally, because of the budget deficit - 21. In accordance to the data of "

filmportal.de filmportal.de is an online database of information related to German film. It includes extensive information on films and filmmakers as well as articles on film issues. The website was released on occasion of the 54th Berlin International Film ...

" shooting have been conducted August 28, 2012—September 25, 2012.

Cast

Western actors play the starring roles of the film, so as planned initially, the French actor

Jean-Marc Barr Jean-Marc Barr (born September 27, 1960) is a French-American film actor and director. He is best known for working on several films from Danish film director and frequent collaborator Lars von Trier since '' Europa'' (1991). Early life and ed ...

should play the role of Volodin, British actor

Rupert Friend Rupert William Anthony Friend (born October 1981) is a British actor. He first gained recognition for his roles in ''The Libertine (2004 film), The Libertine'' (2004) and ''Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont'' (2005), both of which won him awards for ...

will play the role of Pyotr Voyd, and

Sophia Myles Sophia Myles () is an English actress. She is best known in film for portraying Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward in Thunderbirds (2004 film), ''Thunderbirds'' (2004), Isolde in ''Tristan & Isolde (film), Tristan & Isolde'' (2006), Darcy in ''Transfo ...

as Anna. According to Mikheil Kalatozishvili, to make the film truthful — the Russian actors must be at least in the crew of the film, and western stars is a kind of "duck call" for the public from overseas.

Release

The dates of release and filming were repeatedly postponed, so according to the IMDb release was scheduled for 2009. In August 2012, one of the film producers, Martin Paul-Hus, pointed out that the film will be ready by September 2013, same time in December 2012 the director hoped to release film in the spring of 2013. As tells film director Tony Pemberton, he spent 10 years to make this film.

Premiere

The premiere of "Buddha's Little Finger" took place on August 6, 2015 in Leipzig.

References

External links

* * *
''Buddha's Little Finger''
at " Filmz.ru"
''Buddha's Little Finger'' at Rohfilm
* *
''Buddha's Little Finger''
on social network "

VKontakte (short for its original name ''VKontakte''; , meaning ''InContact'') is a Russian online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg. VK is available in multiple languages but it is predominantly used by Russian speake ...

" {{Authority control Films shot in Germany German thriller films 2015 thriller films English-language German films 2015 science fiction films Films based on science fiction novels Films based on Russian novels Films set in Russia Russian Revolution films Russian Civil War films Films about dreams Films about parallel universes Films set in 1919 Films set in the 1910s Films set in 1991 Films set in the 1990s Films set in psychiatric hospitals 1990s in Russian cinema 2015 drama films 2015 films 2010s English-language films 2010s German films Canadian thriller films 2010s Canadian films English-language science fiction films English-language thriller films Films based on works by Victor Pelevin

Synopsis

Cast

Crew

Production

Funding

Title

Screenplay

Shooting

Cast

Release

Premiere

See also

References

Further reading

External links