Some moments at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. I got a chance to see all this year 5 academy award nominated directors at one place! Alfonso Cuarón (Roma), Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite), Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman), Adam McKay (Vice), and Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War)!

After receiving the offer to film the documentary in Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan I was in doubt. I only had skiing experience, but never tried climbing. The summit of 4350m seemed a bit scary. The more I thought about it, the more I felt the need to accept this challenge. The preparation for the shoot was intense and I had to learn using mountaineering equipment and prepare my body. I was climbing trees, jogging and running up the stairs with heavy backpack. Preparation included learning about solar panels, weighing film equipment, thinking how to transfer material, trying contact lenses and etc. It was not easy, but worth every effort. It was a great adventure and a source of inspiration. Here are some pics from behind the scenes. A huge thanks for the team.

Going back to Berlinale after 5 years as alumni talent was not just about the insiprational and emotional flows, but most importantly meeting the old and the new friends! Some of them had premieres, the others were participating in talents and so on. See you next year!

So we spent 42 days in Northam, Western Australia shooting the main part for our film “Around the world in 14 days”. Here are some making of photos. It is the world’s new record! Fedor Konyukhov finished his non-stop journey around the world in 11 days and 7 hours in rozerie hot air balloon.

Shooting “Around the world in 14 days” England part. Here, Cameroon Balloons team is making special roziere balloon to be able to fly around the world.

Starting a new documentary project “Around the world in 14 days”. We started to follow our hero training in Germany, Italy, Russia. This part took 9 days.

2015 summer I have spent almost 2 months shooting my first full feature in Azerbaijan. The script was adopted to a comedy using famous Azerbaijan satire. For me it was more than challenging, I was the only foreigner on the whole crew.

This time we spent 2 weeks for shooting “Paradise Gowns” last winter part in Finland.

10.01-10.19 I was going on a trip by train from Moscow to Beijing. We were shooting demo material for documentary film about the train conductors. The train takes a week to get to Beijing.

A feature length documentary in Finland. Summer shooting part. We spent over 3 shooting weeks over there.