'People are fascinated it's a true story': Nadia Tass on capturing a Russian icon in 'Oleg. The Oleg Vidov Story'

After the Australian premiere of Oleg: The Oleg Vidov Story at CinefestOZ in 2021, director Nadia Tass began to realise she'd captured not only the story of the celebrated Soviet actor but that of others for whom Vidov had been a symbol.

It's another chapter in the legacy of Vidov, who began his career in his home country with films, such as Mete/and The Tale of Tsar Saltan, before being allowed to travel to Denmark to star in Gabriel Axel's The Red Mantle (1967) and Yugoslavia to co-star in Veljko Bulajic's The Battle on the River Neretva (1969). He also acted alongside Orson Welles and Christopher Plummer in Sergey Bondarchuk's Italian-Russian co-production Waterloo.

After marrying into General Secretary Brezhnev's inner circle and eventually being shut out of the industry in his home country, he reinvented himself in Hollywood, making appearances in Love Affair, The Immortals, Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies, Thirteen Days and Monkey Love and on TV shows, including The West Wing and Alias.

Nadia Tass

After overseeing production from New York in 2019, Tass returned home to Melbourne at the end of the year and worked on the film remotely throughout 2020 as COVID-19 upended international travel.

Within her study, surrounded by four screens, she directed the opening sequence, a reenactment of Vidov's passage into Slovenia, putting together a crew and finding a first AD to shoot on location.

However, she made it over to Los Angeles to witness Ronin, known for his roles in series such as The Americans and Homeland, providing first-person insight into Vidov's motivations as an actor, and what led him to leave his home country.

The documentary, which charts Vidov's rise to becoming one of the most well-known actors of his generation by 25 before his failed first marriage leads to him being blacklisted and forced to defect to the West, resonated on a level that surprised even the filmmaker.

"The letters I got from the audience were just incredible," she said.

"Some were from people who hadn't had anything to do with the USSR but were fascinated that it was a true story. Then there were others who did have a connection to the Balkan countries, or Russia who were amazing in saying 'Oh my god, you've told our story, and thank you for letting us know what we left behind."
Nearly three years after screening at CinefestOZ, the film is set to make its free-to-air television debut on SBS, having screened at more than 25 festivals globally, including Moscow, St Tropez, and Rhode Island.

Much like the life of its subject, the production of the documentary spanned multiple continents and included some noteworthy collaborators.

Narrated by Brian Cox, it includes interviews with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Leonid Berdichevsky, Cathy Moriarty, and Amanda Plummer, with Australian Russian actor Costa Ronin serving as the voice of Vidov in reading excerpts from his diary.

Subjects were filmed in New York, Toronto, Belgrade, Berlin, Rome, Malibu, Copenhagen, Havana, San Jose, Sydney, and Melbourne.

Tass, who made her documentary debut with the film, knew Vidov for over a decade before he died of cancer-related complications in 2017, having been introduced through his wife and the film's producer Joan Borsten, whom she had met while living in LA.

She was approached about the posthumous project in 2018, which she believed was down to the late actor previously expressing a fondness for her work.

"There was always talk about putting his life in a book and then possibly in some sort of screen [project)," she said.

"I wasn't part of that discussion but I knew that he really loved my work. He used to say that publicly to me, so Joan was influenced by this and came to me and said, 'I know he would have wanted you to do this."

Like Vidov, Ronin also left Russia to pursue an international acting career, moving to New Zealand in 1996, before relocating to Australia in 2001. He also worked with a couple of Vidov's close friends Boris Lee Krutonog and Elya Baskin, in The Americans and Homeland, respectively.

The 45-year-old drew upon conversations with Borsten, and Vidov's diary and personal notes to embody his voice for the film, which he said allowed him to connect more personally "not only as an artist but as a human being that followed his work".

"We do what we do and say what we say because of the experiences we've had in life," he said.

"So the pain, angst, and everything else that he went through in his earlier life, you don't need to know that - you feel it. You can sense it in somebody whether the person had an easier or difficult life. Oleg definitely didn't have an easy life."

Borsten found the other voice for the film in Cox, whose pre-Succession career included a two-year stint living in Moscow, leading him to write Salem to Moscow: An Actor's Odyssey, a book about his experience directing Moscow Arts Theatre School students in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Three decades later, he hosted Brian Cox's Russia, a documentary about the long history of Scots coming to Russia and falling in love with the culture.

According to Tass, not only did Cox possess a background in the dark history of Russian politics, but he was also fascinated by the fact that Vidov and Borsten acquired the international rights to an award-winning Russian animation library, going on to partner with Baryshnikov, who invited 36 leading actors to re-voice the films, which were subsequently re-released.

"Brian had heard about this because he is a Russophile and was in awe of the fact that this happened," she said.

"He wanted to support this notion that Russia has such an incredible culture."

Tass also identified the interview with Baryshnikov as another highlight of the production, having been "fascinated" by the approach of the Latvian and American dancer, choreographer, and actor.

"He really wanted to do the interview, but he didn't want COVID coming into his house," she said.

"Instead of having a crew coming in, it was Lisa, his wife, who set the camera up, and then I was working through her to line up the shot before feeding in the questions.

"That sort of thing happened a lot in this film, whether it be Baryshnikov, Brian, or Costa."

Oleg: The Oleg Vidov Storywill screen on SBS on June 24, after which it will be available to stream on SBS On Demand.

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