Aleksei Borovikov on expressing his own personal experiences in his work

Aleksei Borovikov

In this series, we will be highlighting many notable people who have contributed to the queer community in media. We’ve asked them some questions to provide us with an introduction on who they are and what we can expect from them in the future. 

Aleksei Borovikov is an independent filmmaker. His career started in regional and national television in Russia for fifteen years, and his portfolio is now abundant with many award winning works with global audience recognition. Check him out at aborovikov.com.

What are you best known for? 

I guess, besides One More Please, it's the work that got the most awards I've ever been granted - my thesis film made back at Moscow Film School called Musician (IMDb, web). It's a very personal story about a young pianist who tries to use his talent to resolve the parents' divorce. This one was lucky enough to not only get laurels and trophies, but also monetary prizes, so it helped me to make a slight return to everyone on the crew who contributed to the budget. As for the audience recognition, I remember having polar opinions: people either find it childish and peculiar or love it to the point they would come over to me after screening to shake my hand and tell me it brought them to tears. I was just trying to make an honest story of a kid going through a family breakup.

What is the first thing you directed?

Oh, it was the time when I first decided to check if I like it and can do it at all. So, I wrote a short which was not actually a short, not a feature either, like 30 pages or so, and I decided to shoot. As I didn't know anyone yet and didn't have any experience, I was doing almost everything by myself, including picking up and returning the equipment and bringing talent to the location. It was a night shoot in a restaurant that I was lucky enough to get for free. We did only one scene, but it was a good one, so it helped me to get into a film school after I realized I need to develop connections and skills thoroughly. That mid-length movie was never finished though.

What are you working on that no one knows about yet? 

I am at the very early stage of development of a feature script. No one knows about it partially because the idea isn't 100% concrete, and many things still might change completely, but from what I can tell as of now, it's a love story - very personal, as many films of mine.