Day Watch

Colour, 35 mm
Russia, 2006, 132 min
Section: Midnight Screenings

Synopsis

In this, the second part of the epic adaptation of Sergey Lukyanenko’s fantasy trilogy, the world is still being held together by a delicate balance between the forces of Light and Dark. The balance is maintained by so-called Night and Day Watches who see to it that the Treaty is observed. According to the Prophecy, the battle between good and evil will end with the coming of the man predetermined to become the Great Other. This is Yegor, who at the end of the last instalment gave in to The Dark. His father, Anton, tries to mask his son’s actions, which violate the Treaty. At the same time he is seeking the Chalk of Fate in order to rewrite fate and bring Yegor over to The Light. The future of the world also depends on the sorceress Svetlana, with whom both men are in love. When the Treaty is definitively broken, a gigantic battle breaks out over Moscow. The only escape is into the past… Day Watch connects the flashy style of Hollywood blockbusters with the traditional poetics of vampires, witches, and werewolves, and sets them in an environment of prefab suburbs and the Moscow Metro.

About the director

Timur Bekmambetov (b. 1961, Guryev, USSR) graduated in stage design from the State Theatre Institute in Tashkent (1987). In 1994 he debuted with the film Peshavar Waltz, which he made with Gennady Kayumov, and which won the Best Director Award at the Karlovy Vary IFF. He then filmed a series of commercials inspired by Russian history for the Imperial bank. Bekmambetov learned about the commercial side of the film market in the USA from director and producer Roger Corman. He capitalised on this knowledge in the film Night Watch (2004), the first part of a trilogy based on the books of Sergey Lukyanenko. Night Watch made a record $16 million in Russia, more than Spider-Man 2 or Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. In addition to the last part of Lukyanenko’s trilogy, Bekmambetov is currently working on the film The Irony of Fate 2, and also on his Hollywood debut Wanted.