page_title: Loveless (film)
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Loveless (film) / Production / Development
caption_attribution_description: March, 2015
context_page_description: Loveless is a 2017 drama film directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, who co-wrote it with Oleg Negin. The story concerns two separated parents, played by Maryana Spivak and Aleksey Rozin, whose loveless relationship has decayed into a state of bitterness and hostility. They are temporarily drawn back together after their only child goes missing and they attempt to find him.
  The story was inspired by the search-and-rescue group Liza Alert and Zvyagintsev's desire to make a film about a family. He was originally interested in making a Russian reworking of the 1973 Swedish miniseries Scenes from a Marriage but could not obtain the rights. Loveless was produced with international support after the Russian government disapproved of Zvyagintsev's 2014 anti-corruption film Leviathan. As a result, Loveless is a co-production of Russia, France, Belgium and Germany. Cinematographer Mikhail Krichman used a realistic style during filming in Moscow in 2016. Although Zvyagintsev said he had no interest in politics, he incorporated a skeptical view of the police into the film. Themes include parental neglect, the state of lovelessness or nelyubov, and bleak environments.
context_section_description: Producer Alexander Rodnyansky said Loveless was envisioned as a reflection of "Russian life, Russian society and Russian anguish", but was also intended to be relatable to other countries. Rodnyansky also said a desire to look at a family was a starting point in the story's conception, and that the director and screenwriter Andrey Zvyagintsev started writing the story while visiting the United States in 2015. Zvyagintsev said the film began as an attempt to remake Scenes from a Marriage, the 1973 miniseries by Ingmar Bergman. Zvyagintsev claimed to have met Bergman at Fårö in 2003, where they discussed a remake of the miniseries. An unsuccessful attempt to buy the rights to the miniseries led writers Oleg Negin and Zvyagintsev to redraw the plot, deciding to base it on news stories about the search and rescue team Liza Alert. Negin submitted the title Nelyubov to Zvyagintsev, which the director said is a Russian word referring to both a lack of love and a dire spiritual condition. Despite the flawed nature of the lead characters, Zvyagintsev said:
  I never perceived them as monsters ... They're just people, like all of us, it’s our reflection, and in some traits of their characters, I even saw myself. These stories come from personal experience and the stories of Oleg Negin, my co-author, and other people. 
  While Zvyagintsev claimed to be disinterested in politics, his story reflects his belief that "The modern-day police don't care about people". He later said Loveless was "over-politicized". He chose to start the story in October 2012, which he said was a point when the Russian people were optimistic about beneficial political reform, ending in disappointment in 2015. The film also includes references to the war in Donbass. While the conflict is referenced through Russian propaganda, Zvyagintsev said his films are anti-government and that the scenes were intended to show the lives of his characters:
  All this propaganda that you hear on the radio in the film is just the real background which we Russians lived in from 2012 to 2015 because the main action takes place during six days in the October of 2012. And, then we see the characters after several years in 2015 when, already, all these tragic events between Russia and Ukraine have happened. They’re just the real background that we experienced in those days. 
  Zvyagintsev's earlier film Leviathan, about corruption in Russia, received 35% of its budget from Russia's Ministry of Culture. However, Loveless was made without financial support from the national government because the Ministry of Culture disapproved of Leviathan when it was finished. The producers neither requested nor received any offers of state support for Loveless, Zvyagintsev said. Rodnyansky instead appealed for funding from wealthy Russian Gleb Fetisov and foreign companies, including Why Not Productions in France and Les Films du Fleuve in Belgium.
caption: The war in Donbass is referenced in the final scenes.
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