The second half of filming on Irish-Russian co-production ‘Moscow Never Sleeps’ has been put on hold due to adverse weather conditions in Russia.
The feature film, which Irish director Johnny O’Reilly is helming, began shooting its first leg in Moscow on August 29. Principal photography was initially scheduled for seven weeks, but has now been pushed back to next spring as a result of the harsh winter in Moscow.
Multi award-winning director O’Reilly has also written the script for ‘Moscow Never Sleeps’, which follows five different people; a bureaucrat; an orphan; an actor; a singer, and a teenager; as their stories all interconnect to show the Russian capital in a never-before-seen light.
Well known Russian actors Evgenia Brik, Alexey Serebryakov, Artur Smolyaninov, Sergey Gazarov and Svetlana Nemolyaeva, and Ukrainian actor Yuri Stoyanov, have all been cast in prominent roles.
Katie Holly is co-producing for Dublin-based Blinder Films with O’Reilly’s Snapshot Films, which he runs from his current base in Moscow. Russian producers Andrey Zakharovm, who worked on O’Reilly’s previous feature ‘The Weather Station’, and Anna Katchko, are also co-producing.
British cinematographer Roman Osin (Mickybo & Me, Pride & Prejudice) is on board, with all hair, makeup and costume departments based in Russia.
The feature has received more than €500,000 in funding from Eurimages and the Irish Film Board. It is not yet known whether the original €3m budget has been compromised due to the delay in filming.
Darren Chan (Cowboys) will edit the feature, with Windmill Lane looking after all other post-production.
Filming will resume in mid-April and continue until mid-May 2013.
‘Moscow Never Sleeps’ will mark O’Reilly’s second Russian-language feature in as many years, after his debut feature ‘The Weather Station’ was released in US cinemas last month.
O’Reilly previously cut his teeth in the filmmaking world with his award-winning short ‘The Terms’, which nabbed him the 2000 Woodstock Film Festival Jury Prize, the Best Short Film title at the Terezin Fort Film Festival, and second place at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival the same year.
