The Reel Russia

Illustration for TIME by Jonathan Burton

Despite the movie business's reputation for waste and excess, there are few places more ruthlessly scheduled, more efficiently choreographed than a film set.

Unless that set happens to be in Russia.

On a recent morning in Moscow, the crew for You and I , an English-language movie directed by British filmmaker Roland Joffé, huddled listlessly around a candy-red Ferrari in the shadow of the Hotel Ukraine. The Ferrari scene was critical to the story, a coming-of-age drama about two young women caught up in Moscow's high life, but the crew's idleness was now stretching into hours....

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