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Russian Interpreter for BERLINALE International Film Festival

March 9th, 2011

I was invited as a Russian interpreter in Berlin for the Berlinale International Film Festival. It was a very big event that attracted thousands and thousands of people all over the world. Film stars, fild directors, fans, journalists – everybody was overwhelmed with excitement.

Russian Interpreter BERLINALE

Among other films that were presented in the Competition section there was a Russian/Ukranian film on Chernobyl disaster. Film director and actors came to the Festival for the film premiere. Once the film was shown, a number of interviews were held with Mr. Mindadze, the film director and scriptwriter. That is when my work began.

We had about 15 interviews one right after another. While one crew was shooting, the other was setting up equipment. We started with a TV channel from the Czech republic which was followed by Eurochannel, Reuters, Al Jazeera and many other international TV channels. Journalists were very interested  in the film since it was a kind of metaphor of the Russian mentality. Mr. Mindadze was asked several times about his memories of the day of the disaster. I watched the film the day before so when I was interpreting I knew what I was talking about, reading on the Chernobyl disaster also helped a lot.

Next day we had interviews with the print: Le Monde was one of them. It was a very intense interview since the journalist deeply understood and felt the film. Mr. Mindadze was very pleased that his work attracted real professionals who didn’t need basic explanations.

I enjoyed working with M.Mindadze and wish him all the best in his creative work. And I enjoyed working for Berlinale,too. It was a great experience. Red carpet experience, so to speak 🙂