Four enthusiasts set off on a round-the-world journey by helicopter. A film about dreams that erase boundaries — and the price that must be paid for them.
Dmitry Kubasov
2018
About
The documentary Helicopters tells the story of a round-the-world journey undertaken by four aviation enthusiasts flying helicopters. Over the course of forty-three days, the crew travels across Europe, Africa, Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Siberia, spending up to ten hours a day in the air.
The film’s protagonists are not professional aviators, but people for whom flying has become a way of life. At its center is pilot Mikhail Fariх, whose love of the sky is rooted in family history: he inherited his passion for aviation from his father and grandfather and carried it throughout his life. Fariх was one of the most active advocates of small aviation in Russia, campaigning at the legislative level for the right to fly freely and viewing restrictions as absurd.
Helicopters is a film about the collision between dream and reality, about a freedom that both attracts and destroys, and about the human desire to rise above the ground—even when the cost of that ascent becomes unbearably high.
Reviews
Dmitry Kubasov — director
A documentary filmmaker. Author of the films Alyokhin (2012), Winter, Go Away! (2012), and Butterflies (2016).
A graduate of the School of Documentary Film and Theatre founded by Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov.
Participant and award-winner at international film festivals including Locarno, IDFA, DOK Leipzig, Artdocfest, and Message to Man.
Curator of the documentary filmmaking workshop at the Moscow School of New Cinema (MSNC).
Currently lives in Germany.
Director: Dmitry Kubasov
Composer: Ivan Malezhik
Sound designer: Ilya Petukhov
Cinematographer: Dmitry Kubasov
Editor: Dmitry Kubasov
Producers: Anastasia Murashkina and Tikhon Pendyurin
Featuring: Mikhail Fariх, Dmitry Rakitsky, Alexander Kurylev, Vadim Melnikov