Private Project

Brodsky. Trial.

Logline: Brodsky's bros reminiscing about trial

March 1964, in Leningrad, USSR, a trial was held against the poet Joseph Brodsky. The future Nobel laureate was charged with parasitism. Over the course of several years, he experienced exile, asylum and eventually was deported from his homeland.
60 years later, the poet's friends came to his former apartment, which had turned into a museum, to share their stories about those events.

  • Mariia Kletskina
    Director
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Бродский. Суд.
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Feature, Television
  • Genres:
    Interview, Historic, Brodsky
  • Runtime:
    52 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    May 9, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Russian Federation
  • Country of Filming:
    Russian Federation
  • Language:
    Russian
  • Shooting Format:
    HD
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Distribution Information
  • Stan Poplavskii
    Sales Agent
    Country: Russian Federation
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Mariia Kletskina

Biography
Maria Vladimirovna Kletskina was born on August 3, 1992, in the village of Mikheykovo, Smolensk Region, Yartsevsky District. In 2014 she graduated from the History Department of Smolensk State University. In the same year, she came to St. Petersburg. Since 2016, she has collaborated with the n-studio company and participated in the creation and production of advertising and media content as a casting director and administrator. In 2020-2022, as a producer and director, she launched the project “Brodsky. Friends” at the Joseph Brodsky Museum Foundation, where nine interview films with the poet's friends were released, as well as a documentary by Joseph Brodsky. The court. In 2022, she completed Lectory cinema courses as a feature and documentary director. In 2022, she shot the feature short film “The Flood”, as a screenwriter, director, and general producer.

Filmography
2013 film film “Stained glass
2016 doc. “Kalinov Bridge. A 30-year play”
2019 short film “Eternal Values”
2020-2021 film series “Joseph Brodsky. Friends”
2023 film series “The Flood”
2023 dock “Joseph Brodsky. Court”

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Director Statement

The trial of Joseph Brodsky, now one of the most popular poets both in Russia and abroad, was a landmark event in the second half of the 20th century. The unjust trial of the writer, on a trumped-up charge, stirred up the cultural community, and there were those who supported the prosecution, but also many who selflessly defended.

I had a unique opportunity to ask the poet's contemporaries and friends about this event. All of them are now living M. Gordin, M. Milchik, K. Azadovsky, M. Meylakh, and others are themselves leading figures in Russian culture and literature.
The film is designed to introduce the viewer to the course of the trial and to show the confrontation between a free creative person and a soulless state machine. To raise topics of goodness and justice that are relevant regardless of the specific historical context.

Joseph Brodsky is still one of the most popular poets in Russia and abroad, both among Russian-speaking readers and among foreigners interested in Russian culture and literature. During the pandemic, the poem “Don't leave the room, don't make a mistake” became a hymn to forced isolation.
The poet's unique fate has long attracted the attention of readers. A person who did not graduate from school later became a Nobel Prize laureate and an honorary doctor of many universities; was persecuted and gained worldwide fame; an emigrant who became one of the symbols of Russian culture in the second half of the 20th century.
The central event of the Soviet part of his biography was a wrong trial on charges of parasitism, which was completely untrue: he wrote poems, translated, and worked in other areas not related to literature. Thanks to the distribution of the court transcript, his name became widely known in 1964, and A.Akhmatova, S.Marshak, K.Chukovsky, and D. Shostakovich spoke in defense of the poet.
In our film, the poet's friends who attended the trial, Y.Gordin, M.Milchik, K. Azadovsky, M. Meylakh, and others, who themselves are now outstanding figures in our culture, talk about the process, about the circumstances of the arrest and persecution of Brodsky, about their perception of these events at that time and about their modern understanding.
Our film deals with the conflict between a free creative person and a soulless state machine, the theme of humanity, truth, and justice, regardless of circumstances and specific historical context.