Lev Dodin

For its creators, this film became, in a sense, a labor of love and duty. *Yuri Butusov: Drums Within* is a film about the director’s talent, his confrontation with reality, his mission, and love. Those featured in the film—Butusov’s students, actors who worked with him, his former classmates, close associates, and his "gang"—were unanimous: knowing and working with him was never, and could never have been, just another project. He changed the people he met and transformed the space around him; he would stir things up and create a swell of energy—making the whole cauldron boil. Yet, often enough, he himself found himself powerless against that very tide. Making a film about such a man—avoiding the trap of turning him into a monument and ensuring the result was anything but banal—was a formidable challenge for the filmmakers. They worked on the project for over a year, gathering a wealth of rare archival material and interviewing dozens of people.

A story about Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski, a twentieth-century theatre genius. Owing to his powerful extraordinary talent he managed to stay a true artist and a free spirit within the harsh Soviet system. In the film contemporary theater and film directors (Kirill Serebrennikov, Katie Mitchell, Lev Dodin and others) show how Stanislavski's method affects their everyday work. Each of the directors finds his or her own reflection in the mirror of his genius. In search of an answer to the question whether modern theatre really needs Stanislavski they discover that art lacks its most essential part – the human being.