Beanpole
All actors and roles (10)
All team (20)
Short description
Set in Leningrad in 1945, Beanpole follows two young women, Iya and Masha, who served in the war and now return to a city left in ruins. The fighting is over and the siege has ended, yet daily life remains a struggle, and both women carry physical and psychological wounds. Iya, known by the nickname of the title, works in a hospital, while Masha comes back to find her old home and the people in it changed. Their friendship, formed at the front, is tested as each tries to build some kind of future among the rubble.
The film is a Russian drama directed by Kantemir Balagov, who wrote the screenplay with Alexander Terekhov. It was his second feature, made after his debut and before Butterfly Jam. Viktoriya Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina play Iya and Masha, with Konstantin Balakirev, Kseniya Kutepova, Olga Dragunova and Andrey Bykov in supporting roles.
Made with production companies in Russia and the United States and produced by Aleksander Rodnyansky, Sergey Melkumov and Natalya Gorina, the film runs 134 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.2 from around 13,000 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 7 from roughly 365 votes. A critics' rating of 7.8 from 111 reviews is slightly higher than the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- All bandages were tinted with tea and dried on the radiator the night before filming to simulate a washed-out appearance.
- The film features a scene celebrating the New Year. The crew gained access to archives where they discovered how small pieces of cotton were threaded onto strings to imitate snowflakes.
- The film used real tram cars from that era, now stored in the Museum of Urban Electric Transport in St. Petersburg. For a number of shots, the crew had to devise a structure that could imitate the external footboards that existed at the time for fare-dodgers – one that wouldn't damage the museum exhibit and could simultaneously support a dozen passengers.
- Window cracks were sealed with genuine newspapers from 1942, found by the props master at the Udelnaya Flea Market – all issues of the "Pravda" newspaper from that year. During the set decoration process, these newspapers had to be carefully hidden, otherwise they would be taken as souvenirs. In addition, these newspapers were cut and used to make improvised napkins on bedside tables for the New Year's scene in the hospital.
- To develop prosthetics for damaged limbs, patients in hospitals of that era made their own training devices. The team managed to find these homemade items in museums and books and create accurate replicas.
- The walls in the hospital corridor were repainted green in three stages directly during filming. But in the final scene in the hospital corridor, the corridor is shown completely renovated. This was not in the original plan, but the producers suggested it to the director, who liked the idea. As a result, the walls were painted between takes unnoticed, and this remained in the film.
- Syringes with a telescopic needle retracting into the body of the syringe were specially made for close-up shots in the hospital.
- The film was shot in Saint Petersburg in 2018.
- Real posters from that era are displayed on the poster stand near the club.
- The son of a party official’s car is also a museum exhibit. It is a 1938 Mercedes. The actor who played Sasha underwent training to be able to handle it himself.
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