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Return to Playing the Victim 
Interview with Vladimir and Oleg Presnyakov (Screenwriters)
How did you come up with the story?
Since our school years we had this idea that life feels very much like a long-drawn police reconstruction of a crime scene and we all play our part in it. Later, we witnessed the downfall of Atlantis – the Soviet Union's demise. As if it were one of Chagall's paintings, we were facing a whirlwind of reality and myth pieces. Then, one day we woke up in London and our character, Valya, was before us. A guy who sleeps with his baseball cap and is very afraid of living his life, afraid to be sincere and in love, afraid to be free because he is sure he will be punished for this. We wanted to overcome this fear of freedom with him. Both our play and script are filled with this desire.
What was the idea behind blending the situation of youth in Russia and Europe with a literary work like Hamlet?
We always considered Hamlet to be a person being born from the word. Meaning that his parents were not “responsible” for the appearance of this person who we perceive as Hamlet. He gives birth to himself - through reflection and feelings. In Playing the Victim our character faces the same task; he has to be born again, to be born from his thoughts and the intuition of life.
Playing the Victim was first a play and then was adapted to cinema, how much did the story change?
We like making remixes of our plays. We like to think that a written piece could change just as a person. That's what the script of this movie has become to us – a remix of our play. It is actually pretty close to the production brought to life by the London Royal Court Theatre in 2003 and presented at the Edinburgh festival. We were happy then that among all the actors who came to the casting found the right guy to play Valya. A very young actor, Andrew Scott. He was great in this production and he actually was Valya just as we'd imagined him. Now he is famous for his many roles in theatre productions and movies, including his part in Sherlock (the BBC series) as Jim Moriarty. 
Were you happy with the result when you first watched the film?
This movie has an interesting fate. It's already been about seven or eight years since the shooting. The movie has won prizes in festivals. In Russia it is still perceived by many as a revelation about the modern day. It's discussed, argued about. We think today it's extremely difficult to find topics that could strike a chord. People live such different lives but our character, Valya, just as the police captain, are able to touch different generations.
If you could, what would you change from the film version?
We wouldn't change anything in this movie, but we could make a very different one with the same script.
Are you currently working on any other scripts? Could you tell us something about it/them?
Surprising as it may seem, we have recently finished a project for the Russian office of the Disney studios. It's called After School and it's a TV series of nine episodes about the life of modern teens. In this project we were both authors of the script and directors. And just these days a street musical, Europe-Asia, which we've staged in one of Budapest theatres, had its opening night. We have plans to stage our play Salman's head. And if we're lucky, we'll make a movie for which we've just finished the script, Not a Russian movie.
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