Angels in Paradise
Synopsis
Leningrad in the late 1970s. Bored teenagers kill time drinking vodka to stave off the dread of being drafted to Afghanistan. Misha meets Galia, a girl from a long line of Russian aristocrats who have survived by lying low. These two wounded angels choose to do the impossible thing: to dare to love each other and live for themselves. Defying irresponsible, alcoholic adults, they struggle with an energy born of despair to escape from a life of quick fixes, booze and compromises.
Credits
Director (1)
Production and distribution (3)
- Executive Producer : Ognon Pictures
- Foreign production company : Studio Troitskij Most
- French distribution : Avanti Films
Full credits (9)
- Executive Producer : Humbert Balsan
- Screenwriter : Evgueni Lounguine
- Director of Photography : Valeri Myoulgaout
- Music Composer : Andreï Makarevitch
- Editor : Irina Gorokhovskaia
- Sound Recordist : Edouard Vanounts
- Costume designer : Tatiana Patrakhatseva
- Press Attaché (film) : Emmanuel Vernières
- Production Designers : Boris Petrouchanski, Serguei Kokovkine
Media Gallery
Technical details
- Type : Feature film
- Genres : Fiction
- Production language : Russian
- Coproducer countries : France, Russia
- Original French-language productions : Unspecified
- Production year : 1996
- French release : 05/05/1999
- Runtime : 2 h 16 min
- Current status : Released
- Visa number : 79.443
- Visa issue date : 23/09/1996
- Approval : Yes
- Production formats : 35mm
- Color type : Color
- Aspect ratio : 1.85
News & awards
About
"Angels in Paradise" is the answer to the questions I asked myself when my first son, Antoine, was born in Paris: Why am I living in France? Why do I have a French son? Why does one leave the country of one's birth?
"This film is a way of taking revenge on my youth. I didn't come to France because I wanted to; I came to stay alive and not be killed in Afghanistan. It's a destructive revenge, but it's also creative. It is in filmic form because pictures were the only way in which I could formulate the answers. I felt a deep need to pin down the official lie that surrounded me, the total despair that ruled everything. In a word, that whole period was gray. Not black but gray, which is much more soul-destroying. Colorless and odorless.
(Evgueni Lounguine, Director)
