The Fool (film)

The action takes place in a provincial Russian city ^{[k 1]} . A young plumber Dmitry Nikitin, who is also studying as a civil engineer, is called to a dormitory in the evening, where a water pipe has been broken. During the inspection of the building, Nikitin determines that it is in disrepair and may collapse. He goes home, but understands that the building will not last more than a day. The hostel is home to more than eight hundred people who are not even aware of the danger that threatens them.

Nikitin, through his mother’s girlfriend, who works as an accountant in the city administration, finds a way to report the danger to the mayor of the city of Galaganova, who is celebrating her 50th birthday at the restaurant at this time. The mayor gathers senior city officials in a small restaurant hall for an urgent meeting: the fall of the building threatens with a financial audit, as a result of which large-scale budget thefts can be revealed over the years, in which the mayor and her subordinates are involved.

Although Galaganova is inclined to decide on the evacuation of people from the building, she soon realizes that it is not possible to resettle tenants for several reasons. The main reason was the refusal of the owner of the construction company Safronov to temporarily move into a new residential complex. Safronov’s refusal becomes understandable to Galaganova after her deputy and “ gray cardinal ” Bogachev admits to her that he has invested heavily in this construction and expects to get profit. Then the mayor and Bogachev decide to put the blame for a possible catastrophe on their subordinates: the head of the fire department and emergency situations Matyugin, who did not perform proper control, and the head of the housing and communal services department Fedotov, who allegedly plundered construction funds. To do this, they decide to kill them by running the legend that they fled the city. The police chief, having received an order from the mayor by phone, tells Nikitin, Matyugin and Fedotov that the evacuation of residents is already underway, and invites them to drive to make sure of this on the spot. However, instead of the dormitory, the police take Matyugin, Fedotov, and Nikitin to a remote place. Before being shot, Fedotov persuades them to let the young plumber go. The police order Nikitin to be silent and immediately leave the city with his family.

Nikitin hurries home and that night drives away with his wife and son, being sure that the residents of the hostel are already resettled, but along the way he sees that there is nobody near the hostel. Having quarreled with his wife, who does not want to let him go, because she is afraid for the family and because there are no people in the hostel, Nikitin runs to the hostel and begins to wake the residents with a cry that the building is falling. At dawn, he manages to drive everyone out into the street, but one of the local alcoholics sets up a crowd against the plumber, and he is brutally beaten ^[1] . Nikitin remains lying on the threshold of the hostel, and the residents go back to the building.

The film was shot in Tula and Moscow . For filming a collapsing building, a real hostel was found in Tula (Metallurgov St., 85). Cracks crawling along the wall were created by artists, and from the point of view of physics, they are impossible neither in shape, nor in the directions of fractures. The scenery was eight meters wide and three meters high, and the rest was finished with a computer. Inside the rooms on four floors, the cracks were real, they, according to the residents' consent, were made by the film crew (after the shooting was completed, a little repair was made at the expense of the creators of the picture).

Family scenes in Nikitin’s house were shot in an ordinary Moscow apartment in Kuzminki. During the filming, the owners of the apartment were in the next room ^[2] . The painting is dedicated to the memory of Alexei Balabanov .

In the CIS there were only 17 copies of the film for cinemas and the film could not win its audience, box office for 3 weeks of rental in the CIS amounted to $ 23,115 ^[3] . The film became popular in the CIS only in January 2015, a month after the release, when it became possible to watch it not in the cinema, then it got into the top 250 of Kinopoisk . Such a popularity was strongly influenced by a positive review of the film from BadComedian , which collected 1.5 million views on YouTube ^[4] . Yuri Bykov agrees that a positive review of Badcomedian helped the film “unwind” ^[5] .

• “ Cinema ” - “ Good night ”
• “ Sawing ” - “I will buy you a house”
• Irina Allegrova - “Happy Birthday”
• Mikhail Shufutinsky - “Old Cafe”

• The Russian film "Fool" attracted the attention of foreign media // " Rossiyskaya Gazeta ", September 22, 2015
• Yuri Bykov: “These films give a breath of air” // Kommersant , August 9, 2014