Mikhail Rudy, Portrait of a pianist

To celebrate the release of his first autobiographical novel, this documentary narrates the extraordinary life of Mikhail Rudy, a greatly renowned pianist with Russian origins.

It deals with his first musical experience in an underpass in ruins, his adolescence in the red light district of a workers city in the south of Ukraine surrounded by rival gangs fighting with knives, his resistance to KGB agents in Moscow, which led to his exile and then his success at the Marguerite Long Competition in Paris, the requested political asylum in France, his spiritual quests in Orthodox monasteries and in the Himalayas, and his meetings with personalities such as Rostropovich, Nureyev, Karajan, Messiaen and Chagall.

The views of Mikhail Rudy on his own journey are tender and ardent, playful and tragic, so much that we sometimes forget that we're watching a documentary, as his life is like a work of fiction… worthy of a novel!

Movie director : Andy Sommer

Duration : 55 min
Production date : 2009
Production : © France 2 / Camera Lucida Productions
Available version(s) : EN