Production

Vladislav Pasternak is a co-founder and producer in HHG Film Company. He was also a partner responsible for film production and acquisition in OvalGrid LLC.

OvalGrid, founded by Igor Fokin (CEO) and Vladislav Pasternak, was a production and distribution company known for Nearest and Dearest. The critically praised movie directed by Ksenia Zueva premiered at Kinotavr Film Festival on June 11, 2017. Vladislav Pasternak and Katerina Mikhaylova from VEGA Film produced Nearest and Dearest with Igor Fokin's support.

HHG Film Company started in late 1990s as a creative group called HHG Project. The team wrote short stories, coded software, did local studies, and, finally, started making documentaries from which grew further into HHG Film Company (est. 2007).

HHG’s main directions as a young production company were shorts and music videos, but the goal was to shoot feature films. With a portfolio of approximately 70 low-budget award-winning titles, shot on virtually all available media from VHS and miniDV to 16 and 35 mm, HHG still struggled to develop a feature film project suitable for theatrical release and get it financed. According to Pasternak, at that time he was not interested neither in public-money-dependent arthouse flicks, nor in bad taste mainstream comedies that became relatively popular in Russia during the recession. “My point is to produce original films that would align with what I love to watch as a moviegoer myself,” he said referring James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Mel Gibson, Lars von Trier, Paul Verhoeven and Luc Besson as his role models. In 2009 Pasternak submitted a feature script based on his graduation short Lofty Senses (directed by Leonid Plyaskin and written by Anastasia Chistyakova based on a short story by Arkadi Arkanov) to the Ministry of Culture’s call. The project was selected for a presentation at Cannes Film Festival. Though the movie was never greenlighted, since then Pasternak learned what the market demands and became interested in international coproduction. The next HHG’s short, Invention of Love animation by Andrey Shushkov, had no dialogue at all, and all titles were in English. The movie received recognition among audiences around the world, Shushkov became a sought-after filmmaker and directed animation for HHG’s first American-Russian coproduction short, Densely Hollow (created by Christopher James Lopez & Davi Santos). A few years later Pasternak came up with a project called Adam’s Perfection. It was written in English by Alexander Talal (known for Timur Bekmambetov’s Daywatch), and was based on a story written by Talal and Pasternak in collaboration.

It took a year from a two-page plot outline created by Vladislav Pasternak himself (2012) to a script draft by Alexander Talal (2013) which Pasternak sent to a number of Russian studios, in search for the local part of financing, and to José Luis Alcaine, acclaimed Spanish cinematographer (Almodovar’s La piel que habito) with whom Pasternak planned to work on a period drama he was developing with Talal before. “I have had a big pub spot to shoot the last week, but in the moment I begin to read your script, I cannot let it down,” Alcaine emailed back in less than a week, confirming himself on board. Adam’s Perfection script and its untypical package (cinematographer attached before the director and the cast) attracted CTB, a company owned by Sergei Selyanov, Russian film mogul who produced Oscar-nominated Mongol, Lavatory Lovestory and We Can’t Live Without Cosmos. It took CTB and HHG three more years to arrange a Russian-French-British coproduction, make two more drafts of the script and find a director. Adam’s Perfection in now close to pre-production stage.

During the development of Adam’s Perfection Vladislav Pasternak became involved in more projects, such as Censor by Konstantin Shelepov which producers Pasternak and Nikolai Bunkin successfully introduced at Roskino coproduction pitching panel at Venice Film Festival 2015 (Censor won the contest). Censor is a cyberpunk action thriller shot for just $65,000 (mostly secured by crowdfunding). While making Censor through HHG, Pasternak met Igor Fokin from Filmatico, and the two started a joint company OvalGrid. Censor premiered at Window to Europe film festival in Vyborg, Russia, on August 9, 2017. Later it had a three-week limited theatrical run after the producers submitted it to Russia’s Oscar commitee.

Nearest and Dearest have already won 5 awards and will have its worldwide premiere at POFF, Tallin. The movie will have a domestic release in December 2017.