“Outcast”. Russian movie about vorkout, which conquered Europe

Outcast is the first feature film about a healthy lifestyle. The film won many awards at international film festivals in the USA, Italy, Greece and Australia. Outcast won the best film of the year at the Sport Film Festival, the largest sports film festival in Europe.

Yuri Sysoev

The film has already been translated into four languages, and in Australia it was shown in schools and colleges to promote sport and healthy lifestyles. To learn more about how the idea of “Outcast” came about, “Championship” talked to the director and screenwriter of the movie – Yuri Sysoev.

– Yuri, your movie “Outcast” is the first feature film about a healthy lifestyle. Tell us how you came up with this idea?
– The idea came about under rather funny circumstances. I was walking home from the store with two two-liter bottles of water and on the way did simple exercises. I was practicing while I had free time, and behind me I heard laughter from the benches. When I turned around, I saw that I was being parodied by guys who were sitting on a bench and drinking alcoholic beverages. I thought it was strange, because I try to do sports even when I don’t have time for it, and I was being ridiculed. If I was walking with two bottles of vodka, I don’t think they would pay attention to me. It was this incident that became the impetus for writing the script. I myself lead a healthy lifestyle, as well as my partner in the movie company “Amaranth”, actor and producer Alexei Fursenko. That’s why we wanted to make something related to sports and healthy lifestyle.

“Initially, we did not have the goal of creating the first ever movie about healthy lifestyle. We just found out that before us, no one had ever talked about healthy lifestyles in feature films so specifically and openly.

No one has compared young people who go to clubs, bars, drink alcohol with guys who work out on tourniquets. No one was problematizing these two worlds. My father often told me that the basis of any pedagogy is personal example. I think we are setting a good example with this movie.

– Why did you choose vorkout? Because of its accessibility?
– Yes, vorkout is good because anyone can do it: a millionaire or a student. You can just go outside and that’s it. It is the most accessible sport, unlike fitness. I am in favor of amateur sports, which revitalizes people. We promote training first of all to improve health, only then to achieve sports results. I believe that our picture was a good attempt to tell people about street sports.

The video can be seen on the official YouTube channel of Amarant Production.

– Is the movie based on real events?
– Yes, it is. The entire film was shot in my neighborhood where I grew up and still live. Every micro-episode that happened to the main characters happened to me personally. Sometimes it was even more aggressive than in the movie. The picture, you could say, is based on real events. It tells about the fact that many people who are engaged in tourniquets, face misunderstanding of others, some consider it not a serious occupation, dabbling on the crossbar. Therefore, sometimes young guys who are engaged on the tourniquets, become outcasts in their company. After all, they do not drink, do not smoke, and besides, they are engaged in sports. We wanted to tell about this paradox in our movie. According to the laws of dramaturgy in the movie should be an anti-hero as a counterbalance to the main positive character. In our movie, the anti-hero is the environment in which our hero finds himself.

– You have won many awards. Did you think the audience would like the movie so much?
– We focused on the Internet audience when we created the picture, we wanted to make a social movie. We had experience with the previous film, with which we traveled to various film festivals, so we decided to roll “Outcast” around the world and then only put it on the Internet. We did not expect “Outcast” to have such a successful film festival campaign. I would also like to point out that the movie was made without government support, we made it ourselves.

– “Outcast” has also been translated into several languages.
– Yes, it has been translated into English, Italian, Bulgarian, Spanish. The movie was shown on six continents, and the world premiere was at the Los Angeles Film Festival. In Australia, after the festival, our film was included in a social program. Our Russian film with English subtitles was shown as part of the popularization of sports and healthy lifestyles in schools and colleges in Australia. In Italy we received an award for “best soundtrack of the year”, and in Romania we won the “audience award”.

First of all, we filmed for Russian people. We have a lot of street athletes in our country, like Misha. But there are no movies about them, and we wanted to be the first.

– Which of these awards is the most important for you?
– The most important award we received was from the Sport Film Festival in December 2017.

“Sport Film Festival” is the biggest sports film festival in Europe and at the same time one of the oldest, it has been held in Italy for 40 years.

At this festival, our film took the award for “Best Film of the Year”. When we won, we got a call to tell us that we had taken the main prize. We were surprised, because usually, the prize is not awarded to those who are not present at the festival. It was an important moment for us, because nowadays a peculiar attitude to our athletes has been formed, we perform under a neutral flag at the Olympics. That’s why Italians treated our picture very nobly. On the film festival website and at the festival itself, there was a tricolor next to our film. They let a Russian movie win a prize in such a difficult time. It seems to me that this is a great victory not only for our movie, but for all street sports.

– Now that we’re talking about the Olympics. What do you think about the IOC’s decision regarding our national team?
– I think that in this situation it is not those who are to blame for depriving us of the Olympics, but our sports authorities who have allowed themselves to be treated like this. After I heard about this situation, an idea came into my head. It would be great if nobody goes to the Olympics, but we will make our own internal Olympics. Of course, we would record every result. Then we would understand whether the athlete who didn’t go would have won or not. We could make our own broadcast, and I’m sure all the media would write about it.

– What kind of audience did you expect when you made the picture?
– First of all, we shot this picture for Russian people. We have a lot of street athletes like Misha in our country. But there are no movies about them, and we wanted to be the first to break a certain dam of silence on the subject of healthy lifestyles. Now there are guys who at 20-25 years old have never tried alcohol, it’s fashionable. Our movie came out at a very right time.

– How long did you prepare and how quickly did you write the script?
– The script was written quite quickly. The story began when our company was still making stories for the program “Galileo”. Once we shot a story about vorkout and met Misha Baratov, who later played the main role in our movie “Outcast”. The plot was a comparison of Olympic and street sports. Misha just competed in our gymnasts. It was there that we discovered that in principle their level is almost the same. One is an Olympic athlete, the other is an ordinary boy from the street.

– Mikhail Baratov is an athlete, but not a professional actor. So you originally planned to cast him in the lead role?
– Yes, after we met Misha on the set of “Galileo” we had this idea. I wanted to conduct such an experiment, I wanted to take a real athlete from the vorkout environment, who faced similar problems as the main character. It was an experiment for our company, we had never done this before. We wanted it to be seen during the exercises on the tourniquets that this is not an understudy, but a real athlete.

Watch the video on Mikhail Baratov’s Instagram.

– Did you have any other titles for the movie or did you call it “Outcast” from the very beginning?
– It was right away. There is an American movie “Outcast” with Tom Hanks with the same title, but it has a different translation in the original. “Outcast”, as I think, most vividly and accurately expresses the problems of the picture.

– You mentioned that you lead a healthy lifestyle and do sports. Do you often train and do you stick to a certain diet?
– Yes, I lead a healthy lifestyle. I usually go to the gym three times a week, jump on the trampoline, play tennis, soccer, go to the bath. All at an amateur level, of course. I don’t go to the gym to build up huge biceps, but only for health, I don’t want “bazooka arms”. I’m also a vegan, I haven’t eaten meat or dairy products for four years.

Watch the video in Yuri Sysoev’s Instagram.

– Do you plan to film about health and sports?
– Of course, we plan to. Our company tries to make moral and conscious movies. It’s hard to make movies without support, for some reason the state hasn’t paid attention to us yet. Although we have proved with our victories at the international level that we are worthy of attention. One Russian film festival took our movie, but said they wouldn’t show it. We were told a phrase that probably sums up the whole attitude of Russian festivals to our film: “your movie is good, but it’s too healthy. I hope that in time the situation will change for the better, and there will be more films about a healthy lifestyle!

You can watch the video on the official YouTube channel of Amarant Production.