In Yekaterinburg, a monument to director Alexei Balabanov was unveiled near the Palace of Youth. how send Local media: The ceremony was attended by hundreds of residents of the city, in addition to the Plenipotentiary Representative of the Russian President in the Ural Federal District Artem Goga, director Nikita Mikhalkov, Assistant to the Russian President Vladimir Medinsky, founder of the band Chief Vladimir Shakhirin, actor Alexei Chadov, director and producer Sergei Selyanov, as well as Balabanov’s first wife Irina and his son Fedor.
The monument represents the tram repair car in which Balabanov sits. On such a tram, Danila Bagrov, the main character of the film “Brother”, escaped from the bandits who were pursuing him. Against the background of the monument, frames from the director’s films were displayed.
“Is this how things work? Damn knows.” <...> This man expressed himself in the language God gave him – cinema. This was in no way dictated by time, interest, trend or fashion. He was himself in these films and was responsible for every frame. This makes his paintings absolutely timeless. ” He said At the concert is Mikhalkov, who played one of the roles in Balabanov’s film “Dead Man’s Bluff”.
Vladimir Medinsky said that Balabanov “stirred the nerve of his time.” “[Он] I was born here, I studied here, I absorbed the spirit of freedom of the Ural Mountains, the energy of the Ural, the music, the sound of the Sverdlovsk rock club. He captured the nerve of his era. “He was able to convey not only the era and the years in which he lived, but the essence of the Russian person,” the former Minister of Culture said.
A competition for the monument to Balabanov has been announced in 2024. However, members of the jury, which included representatives of the Yekaterinburg Mayor’s Office and musicians and filmmakers who know Balabanov, stated that there were no “convincing architectural proposals” among the applications received. In the second attempt, 47 participants submitted 58 works to participate in the competition. He was eventually let down in May 2025.
The winner was Miram Baimukhanov, a sculptor from Omsk, a graduate of the Sculpture Department of the St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Repin, a member of the Union of Artists of the Russian Federation. He is the author of the monument “Heroes”, which Installed In the city of Kudrovo, Leningrad Region.
Initially, it was planned that the monument to the director would be erected in front of the building of the Sverdlovsk Film Studio, but then they decided to erect it in the Palace of Youth, not far from the house where the director lived and the school where he studied.
The memorial was scheduled to be inaugurated on May 18, the anniversary of the director’s death. However, the ceremony was postponed to June. by Information 66.ru, this decision was made “due to the schedule of Moscow guests” for the ceremony.