‘Tchaikovsky’s Wife’ Producer on Putin and Russia’s Future in Film: Distribution Taking ‘Biggest Blow’
Christopher Vourlias Since co-founding Moscow-based production house Hype Film in 2011, Ilya Stewart and partner Murad Osmann – Variety Producers to Watch in 2018 – have grown the company from an award-winning commercial and music video producer into one of the most successful film production outfits in the country, thanks in no small part to their partnership with arthouse director and provocateur Kirill Serebrennikov.After collaborating on his 2016 Un Certain Regard prize winner “The Student,” Serebrennikov and Stewart teamed up again on “Leto,” a rock drama which played in competition on the Croisette in 2018. Last year they competed again with “Petrov’s Flu,” a hallucinatory romp through a post-Soviet Russia in the grips of a mysterious flu pandemic.