Bloc Party

Never mind the great masters of world cinema. Since the 21st century got started in earnest, Guillermo Del Toro and Timor Bekmambetov have done more to popularise foreign language titles than Dutch porn channels and TEFL courses combined.

Together, these gentlemen have wowed the global marketplace with a flair for genre that attracts mainstream cinema patrons in their droves. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s one of the Señor Del Toro’s English-language titles (Hellboy, the incoming Hobbit films) or not (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone); if he builds it, punters will come.
Timor Bekmambetov’s breakthrough is more impressive still. Russian cinema has, historically, struggled to find international distribution ever since Tarkovsky shuffled off. But with 2004’s Night Watch, a kinetic post-Matrix, post-MTV, post-apocalyptic vampire saga, Russian film burst onto the global stage and into American multiplexes.
“It was an impossible situation for Russian movies,” recalls the director. “I hope we fixed it with Night Watch.”
Though composed of this very international grammar, Night Watch and its sequel, Day Watch, retain a uniquely Russian identity.
“Everybody says this because of the depressing ending,” observes Bekmambetov dryly.
Meeting Mr. Bekmambetov, you soon understand why his films maintain the party line. Though the 46 year-old can give you chapter and verse on everything from La Strada to Bad Boys II, he is at heart, he insists, Soviet through and through.
“I was born and raised along the Ural River in Kazakhstan,” he teels me. “I crossed the border between Europe and Asia everyday to go to school. I always had the sense of being part of a big Soviet project. Like most people in Kazakhstan, I still feel Soviet not Kazakhstani. I grew up believing that for 25 years. It doesn’t just go away. And I think we have lost a lot. If you look at the warring sides in Night Watch, the forces of Dark have fur coats and designer clothes. The forces of Light are the working man. It is they who have lost the most of all.”
There is little in these origins to hint at the fierce visual stylist he would later become. Born to an engineer father and journalist mother, the young Timor saw few films, fewer TV shows and no comic books.
“I had an imagination though”, he says. “I would like to say I was a dreamer but I was just a very good liar. If my films come from anywhere they come from lies.”
Unsurprisingly, Hollywood has come a-courting. Quentin Tarantino is a huge fan. So is B-movie mogul Roger Corman, who signed Timor up for the 2001 Eastern Bloc smash The Arena.
“The first time I met Roger Corman was for lunch,” recalls Bekmambetov. “I was talking myself up, telling him I made $100 million in Russia with this title and that title. He’s an old man so he just sits slurping his soup. I don’t know if he’s impressed or not. So I go on until he stops. He thinks for a minute. Then he asks me ‘Is it true that you can get a director of photography in Kazakhstan for 500 bucks a day?’ And that was the thing that won him over.”
Bekmambetov’s latest venture is rather more lavish in nature. Wanted, the eagerly awaited adaptation of Mark Millar and J.G. Jones’ comic book series, stars James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman as a fraternity of secret assassins with the power to curve bullets.
A stupendous, high octane action flick, it’s a showboating opportunity for Timor and his glamorous cast.
“We have those paparazzi guys with long lens at the set a lot,” says the director. “But most of the time you’re just dealing with Brad Pitt following Angelina around. And he’s not so bad.”
The film looks set to cement Bekmambetov’s American reputation, though he admits he hasn’t quite done as much as Borat to put his native Kazakhstan on the map.
“That film has done great things for the country,” he laughs. “As soon it is released across Europe we hear on the news that coach trips through the countryside are selling out for the first time ever.”
So no offence was taken?
“Oh no,” he says. “I think Sasha Baron Cohen is a very funny, talented man. I watched the film in Cannes beside an American and at some point they turned to me and said ‘Aren’t you insulted?’ I said, ‘What? I think we are coming off better than you guys’.”

Wanted is released June 25