Encore

Many many words have been written and a few ingenious TV documentaries have been filmed about the great Russian rock band Auktyon, which recently celebrated 30 years of playing music. Everything is completely different in the case of the film Encore: it took seven years for the director, Dmitry Lavrinenko, to make it; he needed just that amount of time to capture the wayward grace still preserved by Fyodorov, Garkusha, Ozersky and their associates. If you look behind the powerful music facade, you find not a story of a band but chronicles of a voyage aimed at incredible, incomparable music. Encore shows how the songs which are now known by heart were composed; it also shows things generally left aside: pieces of everyday life, tour diaries, conversations, including the key phrase: "You should not look at the liberty too much, you might feel dizzy.

Directed by Dmitry Lavrinenko, Encore leans on a strong ensemble — Leonid Fedorov, Oleg Garkusha, Dmitry Ozersky — to carry a story that balances spectacle with character.

The film landed with audiences for its craft and performances, and remains one of the most talked-about documentary titles of 2014.