White Tiger
Short description
Set during the final stages of World War II on the Eastern Front, the story follows the Red Army as they face a mysterious and seemingly indestructible German tank known as the White Tiger. This ghostly vehicle appears suddenly in battle to destroy Soviet forces before vanishing without a trace. After narrowly surviving a devastating encounter with the machine, Sergeant Ivan Naydenov becomes obsessed with its elimination. To combat this threat, the Soviet command develops a specialized T-34 tank, which Naydenov is tasked with piloting in a mission to hunt down and destroy the steel monster.
Directed and produced by Karen Shakhnazarov, the film marks the start of a listed sequence of his works, followed by Anna Karenina. Vronsky's Story and In the Moscow Slums. The screenplay was written by Shakhnazarov and Aleksandr Borodyanskiy. The cast features Aleksey Vertkov as Naydenov, alongside Vitaly Kishchenko, Valeriy Grishko, and Dmitri Bykovsky. Produced in Russia by companies including Mosfilm and the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the project had a budget of 11 million USD and earned 7 million USD at the worldwide box office. Audience reception is mixed, with a rating of 6.1/10 from 5,400 votes on IMDb and 5.7/10 from 113 votes on TMDB.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is dedicated to the director's father, Georgy Shakhnazarov, a participant in the Great Patriotic War who went to the front at the age of eighteen, his fellow soldiers, all veterans of the Great Patriotic War, and the entire generation of Soviet people of that time.
- Filming took place at a military training ground near Alabino, in the Moscow region, where an entire village was built, at Mosfilm – on the 'Old Moscow' outdoor set, part of which was converted into a destroyed European city at the end of the war, and in the pavilions. In the 1st pavilion of Mosfilm, a replica of the hall of the engineering school in Karlshorst was built – the scene of the signing of the Act of Capitulation of Germany was filmed there. In the 3rd pavilion, a tank mock-up was placed, simulating movement and firing – scenes in which the characters are inside the tank were filmed there. And in the 4th pavilion, a 'Hitler's Office' set was built, where the Führer's final speech was filmed.
- Specifically for the film, the Samara studio "Rondo-S" created a 1:1 scale mock-up of a German "Tiger" tank. The tank was equipped with a diesel engine from a military tractor, which allowed it to reach a speed of 38 km/h (the same as the original), and a gun with a device to simulate firing, replicating the German 8.8 cm KwK 36 tank gun used on the original "Tigers". All details were generally copied, except the mock-up weighed three times less than the original. However, due to a lack of funds, a Soviet T-54 and IS-3 tank, disguised as a "Tiger", were used in the film. After correcting the shortcomings, the mock-up was transferred to the "Mosfilm" museum.
- The film is based on the novel "Tankist" by Ilya Boyashov.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
