EXCLUSIVE: Alexander Rodnyansky is a self-confessed “man of many lives” but now, three years after being forced to flee his home in Moscow for being a vocal critic against the war in Ukraine, the Kyiv-born producer is returning to his documentary roots. The Leviathan and Loveless producer and former founder of Ukraine’s first indie TV network 1+1, has nearly wrapped filming a new documentary, Notes of a True Criminal, which he produced and directed.
“It’s called that because I’m a criminal now,” quips Rodnyansky, referring to the eight-and-a-half year sentencing in absentia he received from a Moscow court last year for spreading anti-war sentiments.
Coming from a long line of documentarians – his grandfather was a documentary filmmaker, and his great aunt was pioneering Soviet filmmaker Esfir Shub (The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty)– it’s perhaps fitting that the Oscar-nominated producer is returning to the documentary space at a time when global political unrest is at a high.
The project, he says, will combine elements of doc movies he shot at the end of the Cold War coupled with more recent footage from the war in Ukraine and WWII footage obtained by his family.
“I used fragments of the movies I did at the end of the Soviet Union times, because I started out as a director, as well as fragments of movies done by my mom and grandfather during World War II,” Rodnyansky tells Deadline, adding that footage in the documentary contains battlefield scenes, prisoner of war footage and trials.
“It’s a very personal statement which tells the story through one family practically,” he says. “It starts with the beginning of the war and then goes back and forth. I shot the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Eastern Germany in 1990 and, I say it in the movie, but I had a feeling that these people were not coming back from the war but that they were moving to the war. Yesterday they were soldiers of one army and citizens of the same state, and now they’re coming to different countries and becoming citizens of different states and soldiers of different armies.”
Rodnyansky, who expects to have the project finished next month, says he’s currently talking to major international film festivals with the hope it will get a festival circuit run in the fall.
The project is one of many on Rodnyansky’s bustling slate. Since 2022, the producer, who lives between Los Angeles and Italy has been steadily building a roster of European and international projects with ties to Hollywood through his AR Content banner.
At present, he’s got five different movies at various stages of production: Kornél Mundruczó’s Place to Be with Ellen Burstyn and Taika Waititi, which just wrapped in Australia; Mundruczó’s At the Sea with Amy Adams, which is in post-production; Laszlo Nemes’ father-son drama Orphan, which he produces with Good Chaos, also in post-production; Barry Keoghan and Riley Keough starrer Butterfly Jam, the English-language debut from Kantemir Balagov; and Jessica Chastain starrer Dreams from director Michel Franco, which launched in Berlin earlier this year and was bought by Greenwich Entertainment for North America.
“We’re developing the next projects with all of these directors, most of which are the in English language save for Lazslo which will be in is Hungarian,” he says.
Jessica Chastain in ‘Dreams’
Teorema
Rodnyasky is also coming off the back of Debriefing the President, a limited series based on John Nixon’s book of the same name. Joel Kinnaman stars at the former CIA analyst who wrote the non-fiction book about his experience of being the first American to identify and interrogate Saddam Hussein following his 2003 capture. The drama is set to play on TNT at the beginning of next year.
Rodnyansky produced the series with Leslie Greif, and it was because of the latter’s experience on non-scripted projects such as Chasing Mummies and Opening the Tombs of Golden Mummies that led to the project being produced in Egypt.
“We wanted to do it in an Arabic country, and we checked all the countries of the region and found that Egypt was good for us, speaking on the price and quality of professional teams,” he said. “There’s no rebate, but we were the first big U.S. production there and we were so welcome there. And because of Leslie, we were able to set up the production really quickly out there.”
Rodnyansky has made a career out of shooting films outside of the U.S. and when pressed about President Trump’s threat to impose a 100% tariff on foreign-made films, he acknowledged that “it’s going to hurt everyone” but he is wary that the proposal will even happen.
“Even Barbie was shot outside of the U.S. Where will you find an American movie not shot outside of the U.S.? We did Place to Be in Australia and this movie is set in New York and Chicago and we did it because of the prices. Making movies in America is very costly and expensive. It’s definitely a huge challenge for everyone but I don’t believe it’s going to happen. It’s a very bad idea and would definitely question the dominance of the American film industry.”
He continued: “At the moment all local industries are flourishing and if you see what’s going on, it’s much easier to set up a movie in many other places in the world. It’s very international this business and I’m talking to investors around the globe – Indian, Arabic and Europeans and that’s much easier and quicker.”
For his next slate of films, he’s looking to shoot them all outside of the U.S., namely in Eastern European countries such as Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Lativa and other territories. “It’s so hard to shoot in the U.S.,” he says. “For Butterfly Jam, we did the budgets for New Jersey, Toronto and Calgary and we finally decided to set the production in Europe because costs are too high.”
