Aviator

A man wakes up with complete amnesia and begins writing down the fragments of memories that unexpectedly surface in his mind. As these scattered recollections slowly form a timeline, he starts piecing together the story of his life—uncovering a past that feels strangely distant and unsettling. The deeper he digs into his own memories, the closer he comes to a truth that may change how he sees himself forever.

The film adapts the acclaimed novel Aviator by writer Evgeny Vodolazkin, one of the most respected contemporary Russian authors. However, the film does not follow the book exactly and reworks many elements to fit a more cinematic narrative.

In the original novel, the protagonist wakes up in 1999 after decades in cryogenic sleep. For the film, director Egor Konchalovsky shifted the main events to 2026, believing the chaotic atmosphere of the 1990s would distract from the story’s philosophical themes.

The project spent more than five years in development, with the script rewritten many times. In total, the filmmakers produced 26 different versions of the screenplay before reaching the final shooting script.

Renowned Russian screenwriter Yury Arabov helped write the screenplay during the final months of his life. Despite being bedridden, he continued working on the adaptation for six months with his student Oleg Sirotkin.

The score was composed by Russian musician Maxim Fadeev, who mixed symphonic orchestration with electronic elements such as ambient and trip-hop textures. The director described the soundtrack as a “sound universe” surrounding the film’s story.

An early-20th-century airplane shown in the film was specially built for the production and decorated with Byzantine religious symbols. The design acts as a visual metaphor for the story’s idea of traveling between different eras.