Filming of the series "Dear Willie" has ended

Sergei Makovetsky played the role of Soviet Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev in a political detective story about the Cold War, and Kirill Kyaro played German Chancellor Willy Brandt.

Filming of the series "Dear Willy" about the secret friendship of two main geopolitical rivals in Europe, Soviet Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev and West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who saved the world from a nuclear catastrophe during the Cold War, has ended in Moscow. The project is being produced by Format TV, Studio Chekhov, KION, PREMIER and REN TV with the support of the Institute for Internet Development (ANO IRI). The series will be released in PREMIER and KION online cinemas. The television premiere will take place on the REN TV channel.

The plot of the series is based on historical materials that documentarian, writer and presenter of the REN TV channel Igor Prokopenko has been collecting for 20 years: documents, numerous interviews with the inner circle of both Leonid Brezhnev and Willy Brandt, politicians, intelligence officers. The script of the political detective story was written by Igor Prokopenko in collaboration with Dmitry Novoselov.

The series is set in the 1960s. The world is on the verge of nuclear war. Soviet intelligence becomes aware that the United States is preparing to launch a strike from military bases located in Germany. Realizing that a retaliatory ultimatum would trigger a catastrophe, Soviet Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev decides to conclude a secret agreement with German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Both politicians are at risk: if their contacts become known, one will be expelled from the party, and the other will be impeached. The best intelligence officers of the USSR should establish contact between them in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy, so that even the KGB would not find out about this operation.

The director of the series "Dear Willy" is Vladimir Shchegolkov, the producers are Igor Prokopenko, Vladimir Tyulin, Anatoly Tupitsyn, Ilya Burets, Maxim Filatov, David Kocharov.

In addition to Sergey Makovetsky and Kirill Kyaro, the roles in the series were played by Sergey Marin, Alexey Rozin, Vladimir Konkin, Andrey Gradov, Igor Chernevich, Martin John Cook, Alexandra Bogdanova, Alexander Shtendler, Marietta Tsigal-Polishchuk and others.

"I admit that when the viewer watches the series, he may mistake everything that happens on the screen for the fiction of the scriptwriters – the events will seem too incredible. However, our "Willy" is that rare case when the real story is cooler than the most sophisticated writer's fantasy. To prove this, we are making a documentary afterword for the series, "Dear Willy: it was like that," in which the most incredible episodes are confirmed by the real participants in the events: Egon Bahr, Markus Wolf, Vyacheslav Kevorkov, Dave Murphy — people with whom I worked for many years, were friends and whom I endlessly filmed, realizing that The time will come when their confessions will be invaluable," said Igor Prokopenko, general producer, author of the idea and script.

"The Dear Willy project implements the enormous cinematic possibilities of our country. Filming takes place in three cities — Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. We collide the Soviet textures of Moscow with the textures of Prussian Tilsit (now Sovetsk) and varnish imperial St. Petersburg. A magnificent acting ensemble. We believe, and we do everything to ensure that the audience is not disappointed. The genre of the political thriller is very complex and obliges us to be precise in characters and details," said the director of the series, Vladimir Shchegolkov.

Sergei Makovetsky, actor in the role of Leonid Brezhnev: "I agreed to star in the project because it's an interesting story with unknown facts, a very good group — director, cinematographer, excellent partners. I was interested in creating the image of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev."

Vladimir Konkin, who plays Mikhail Suslov, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU: "I never thought that I would have to play the ideologist of the USSR Suslov. I consider him to be a wonderful man, a man of the era. Roughly speaking, if not for his strong hand, the collapse of the USSR would have been accelerated. I like my character, I respect him. This personality does not contradict my ego, I feel joy that I do not need to split, that the image turns out to be whole. Our project has a combination of historical facts and relevance to the present day. Not everyone is interested in historical exhibits if they are inanimate. But in the series "Dear Willie" there is contact with our difficult reality."

Simultaneously with the release of the series, the novel "Dear Willy" will be published. In addition to the main artistic plot, this edition will include an addition that will reveal in detail the documentary basis of the project. The book will include original interviews with participants of those events and additional historical facts.