Filming of the family fantasy "Ivan da Marya" has begun

Filming of the film "Ivan da Marya" has begun in St. Petersburg. A family fantasy based on an original story based on Russian folk tales is being filmed by the STV film company, Rossiya TV channel, CGF and Globus Film with the support of the Cinema Foundation. The distributor is NMG Kinoprokat (part of the National Media Group holding).

The role of Ivan will be played by actor Timofey Kochnev ("Vampires of the Middle Lane 3", "Daddy's Daughters", "The Boy's Word"). His beloved Mary— Katerina Kuchma. The role of Koshchei went to the real master of reincarnation, Alexander Lykov. Oleg Savostyuk ("Bullfinch", "Give a Show", "Alice in Wonderland"), Alexey Rozin, Inga Oboldina and Maria Raskina also star in the film.

In the story, a simple guy named Ivan accidentally finds himself dressed as a prince and wins the heart of the beautiful Mary, the daughter of the king of a neighboring state. But it's not only Ivan's exposure that threatens their love — the young man is abducted by Koshchei, who has decided to marry him to his enchanted daughter.

"We started working in our usual creative team — together with CGF, Globus Film and Rossiya TV channel. These partners are not just colleagues, but real like—minded people with whom we have already implemented many successful projects. We hope that "Ivan da Maria" will become another bright project in our portfolio, and we believe that the audience will appreciate our new fairy tale. For us, "Ivan da Maria" is a story about how a person is more important than their role. We all live in other people's caftans: someone put it on himself, someone dressed up circumstances, and someone is just afraid to take it off - because suddenly it will not be the prince, but, for example, the most ordinary person," said producer Sergey Selyanov.

"Our fairy tale is that life without love has no meaning. And this is a very unusual fairy tale. Firstly, because here, in the spirit of the times, Marya is going to choose her fiance. Usually, in fairy tales, on the contrary, good fellows go for brides, and the princesses sit and wait for them in high towers. But Marya is an emancipated girl, she got in and went to get the groom. And secondly, because each of the characters is faced with a choice here: life or love. For a children's fairy tale, this is a cool, and actually not a very childish choice. We have a very cool cast, all the actors are very young guys: Timofey Kochnev, Katerina Kuchma, Oleg Savostyuk, Maria Raskina. All of them already have decent filmographies, despite their youth, they are experienced artists. But they infect with their youth, ambition and talent. We also have an excellent Koshchei— Alexander Lykov. Powerful and insidious," said director of photography Serik Beiseu.

"We wanted to tell a fairy tale in which the hero does not prove that he is a "real prince", but rather learns to be himself. Timofey Kochnev plays Ivan exactly like this — without pose, without fabulous pathos, very vividly and humanly, and next to him Ekaterina Kuchma as Marya, a rare combination of tenderness and inner strength. This tale is not about defeating evil, but about how two people find each other against all the rules of the genre, and that's why it seems to us that the audience will root for them in a way they haven't cheered for anyone in a long time," said Alexander Arkhipov, the author of the script.

The geography of filming will cover St. Petersburg‑St. Petersburg, Leningrad Region, Khibiny, Karelia (Khonkasalo Island and Katerlaks Bay on Lake Ladoga) and Perm.

On June 25, Medialogia presented the top 30 Russian series ratings for May of this year. He was led by the Boys project, which scored 2984 points. The second place was taken by the TV series Euphoria (1983 points), and the third place was taken by the Russian Sled (1617 points), which rose by five positions in just a month. The top five also included the anime "Magic Battle" (1378 points) and the TV series "Stranger Things" (1159 points).