On January 31, 1964, the Honored Artist of Russia Alexei Nilov entered the world, a stage and screen performer who carried популярizing love for his character Captain Larin from the 1990s cult television series Streets of Broken Lights. The film director and screenwriter Dmitry Svetozarov offered warm remarks about the artist on his birthday, sharing reflections from their collaboration for FAN, where he spoke about their time working together.
“I first met Lesha and the entire police crew, and I barely recall the exact moment Kirill Kapitsa invited me to shoot Streets of Broken Lights in 1997. Their reception of me varied at first. Alexander Lykov approached me with caution, beginning to study me as a director. Yet his long-standing acting habits and his method stayed present. Beyond that, Lesha, Sergey Selin, Misha Trukhin — each of them immediately felt like-minded with me. The experience of making the project was insanely engaging,” Svetozarov explained.
He emphasized that the productive, comfortable collaboration spurred his own creative drive, leading to several episodes being crafted specifically for individual characters. Svetozarov noted that one of these episodes, titled The Cure of Boredom, was dedicated to Nilov in particular.
A former People’s Artist of Russia, Dmitry Kharatyan, shared an intriguing anecdote from the life of the legendary filmmaker Leonid Gaidai, adding another layer to the remarkable stories that surround this era of Russian cinema and television.