12

Colour, 35 mm
Russia, 2007, 159 min
Section: Official Selection - Out of Competition

Synopsis

A man from wartorn Chechnya is accused of stabbing his stepfather, a retired Russian officer who took him into his care after the death of his parents when he was still a small boy, and brought him to Moscow. The hearing ends, the prosecution has presented its case and it is up to the jury to reach its verdict. Twelve men are led into a school gymnasium... This unconventional remake of Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1956) about the “racism within us” is a reflection of modern day Russia. The film observes a group of men from different social backgrounds seated at a conference table, where their unshakable views and stereotypical prejudices with regard to the Caucasus and antisemitism are called into question at the very outset. The confrontation also challenges our ability “not only to destroy mosques and synagogues, but to erect our own churches alongside them, to change things through our own actions, not to end conflicts with weapons, but with expressions of good will, to rectify the law with compassion and to realise that man is not the means, but the end” (Mikhalkov). These are the issues which, over a period of several hours, twelve outstanding actors take up in a series of invectives and soul-searching monologues…

About the director

Nikita Mikhalkov (b. 1945, Moscow), successful actor (debut 1959) and director (debut 1967) of Soviet film. After Dark Eyes (1987) and a commercial for Fiat, Hitch-hiking (1990), he established the company TriTe Productions and, in 1991, made the film Close to Eden (Oscar nomination, Golden Lion in Venice, Felix award for Best Film from the European Film Academy.) For his film Burnt by the Sun (1994) he won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes IFF and an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. After the ambitious coproduction project The Barber of Siberia (1999) he made a video documentary of the lives of his parents and his daughter Anna. His latest film 12 (2007) won the Special Golden Lion for Overall Work at the Venice IFF. He is planning the premiere of the film Burnt by the Sun 2 for the year 2010. Mikhalkov is Chairman of the Russian Cultural Foundation, he has headed the Russian Filmmakers’ Union since 1998 and is President of the Moscow IFF.