“Educazione Siberiana”, the film adaptation of the famous

novel by Nicolai Lilin, is considered by Gabriele Salvatore

his first costume drama.

As he said: “Nothing of what we see in the film existed, we had

to recreate a world. We shot in Lithuania where there aren’t

written in Cyrillic and with production designer Rita Rabassini

we had to rebuild everything from scratch, looking costumes

and objects of that period.  We can tell that this is a costume

drama, which gives less satisfaction than another one set, for

example, in the 700:there certain differences are clearly evident 

more then here, but there are and we had to integrated them”. 

So, in a film like Educazione Siberiana, costumes are very important.

Salvatores says that John Malkovich himself considered very important

 the choice of costumes:  “The first time John and I got together 

to talk about the film, with the costume designer Patrizia

Chericoni,  we brought an hanger with some costumes. Would you

have to see John as he walked in front of them,  touching the fabrics

or controlled colors. I would have been hours to shoot him. This

shows the great theatrical experience of John, in which the choice

of the costume is really a ritual” the Director says.

With interpretations of a teacher as charismatic as John Malkovich

and two new actors, Arnas Fedaravicius and Vilius Tumalavicius,

the film tells the story of two boys  who transition from childhood to

adolescence,  and the community in which they grew, a community of

Siberian “Honest Crime” , as they like to call themselves.

A community based on a “Siberian Education”,a criminal education,

but with precise and sometimes surprisingly acceptable, rules of honor.

In a very special microcosm, it becomes a universal story that, beyond the

social, acquires a metaphorical meaning that concerns us all.

Source: www.cineblog.it 

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