Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de)
"In One Breath: Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark" is a 44-minute live action documentary from 2003 and the title already says what it is about, namely the making-of of Sokurov's "Russian Ark". The writer and director here is Knut Elstermann and this little film also includes several German interviews with those Germans that worked in influential positions on the Ark. I have not seen the film that this is about, but I think it may be essential to have seen and probably also liked it to see anything memorable in this documentary. I don't like that fact and I also don#t like that here we have a making-of which is extremely generic and adds pretty much nothing of value sadly. It is the same problem as many other times. We hear one superlative after the other, everybody praises everybody, but we learn very little about the film itself, apart from the fact that one of the interviewees was about to surrender (allegedly!) because the project was just too big and challenging to him, but then his adrenaline came into play. Oh well, the script out of which bad films are made and I guess there is a reason why he is not a screen writer. All in all, I found it a fairly forgettable work here. Thumbs down and I don't recommend the watch unless the film this is about is one of your all-time favorites. Also it lacks interviews with Sokurov entirely, which also makes the title a bit of a fraud.
