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White Tiger (Beliy Tigr)

Contemporary World Cinema

Synopsis

A somewhat atypical Russian war story about a man with an extraordinary gift, ‘White Tiger’ is set toward the end of World War II – or the Great Patriotic War, as the Russians call it. Ivan Naidenov, a tank driver (an excellent Alexei Vertkov) is severely burnt in a battle with the White Tiger, a preternaturally powerful German tank. Miraculously, Ivan’s wounds heal quickly, but his recovery is accompanied by amnesia and the mystical ability to understand the language of tanks. The injuries Ivan sustains mean he can leave combat service; instead, he chooses to return to the battlefield to defeat the evil tank. Director Karen Shakhnazarov compares the struggle between man and machine in ‘White Tiger’ with the confrontation between man and whale in Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’; his film is a fascinating, fantastical film about the incomprehensibility of the dark side of human nature and our endless succession of wars.

Official Film Website

About the Directors

Born in 1952, in Krasnodar in the former USSR, writer-director Karen Shakhnazarov is a leading figure in Soviet and post-Soviet Russian cinema; he has been General Director of Mosfilm since 1998. Films include ‘Courier’ (1987); ‘Gorod Zero’, which won a Gold Hugo in Chicago in 1989; ‘Assassin of the Czar’, which was in competition at Cannes in 1991; and ‘Ward No. 6’ (2009).

Credits

Director

Karen Shakhnazarov

Screenwriter

Alexandr Borodyanskiy

Producer

Karen Shakhnazarov

Editor

Irina Kozhemyakina

Music

Yuriy Pateenko

Cinematographer

Alexandr Kuznetsov

Cast

Alexey Vertkov, Vitaly Kishchenko, Valery Grishko, Vladimir Ilyin, Karl Kranzkowski, Christian Redl

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