The Republic of ShKID

The Republic of ShKID (1966)

Республика ШКИД

The film is based on the eponymous book, written by two former street gangsters - Grigori Belykh and Leonid Panteleyev. Film is set in the 1920s St. Petersburg, Russia. Streets of the city are full of the homeless boys. They are caught to be raised and educated at the correction school named after Dostoevsky. The boys are street smart and difficult. But the faculty stands up to the challenge. The teaches are being devoted and caring, and gradually win the respect of the most difficult kids. The school director Vicknixor is a refined intellectual, who becomes a role model for the boys.

Date of release
1966-12-29
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (42)
Runtime
1h 43m
Genres
Family, Comedy, Drama
Director
Gennadi Poloka

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: The Republic of ShKID

The Republic of ShKID is a 1966 Soviet comedy-drama directed by Gennadi Poloka. The premiere of The Republic of ShKID was held on December 29, 1966; in 1967, the film became a box-office leader – it was seen by 32.6 million viewers.

Production

The scenario was based on a fictionalized autobiographical story by former pupils of the school-commune for difficult teenagers named after Fyodor Dostoevsky (ShKID), Grigori Belykh (in the story - Chernykh, aka Yankel) and Alexei Eremeev, who wrote under the pseudonym of "L. Panteleev".

The screenplay was written by one of the coauthors of the novel, Alexei Panteleyev, by then already a well known author of children's literature. Despite Panteleyev's popularity, none of the eleven directors whom he contacted were interested in making the film. Gennady Poloka, according to his own testimony, was brought in as a literary assistant to work on the film, together with Eugene Mitko:

And then someone said:"He has a director's education. Let him film it!"

Some homeless children depicted in the film were played by real juvenile delinquents, which gave the director the additional task of having to make sure that they would not break any laws.

Although Poloka's film immediately gained popularity, Panteleyev was rather disappointed; he wrote in 1967 in "Komsomolskaya Pravda":

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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