Sparta Film Russian

[Adah]

AlexanderPetrov was born in a small town Pereslavl-Zalesskiy, Russia. During school years he played for the national football team. After leaving school he entered the University of Pereslavl the Faculty of Economics. During his studies he took part in cultural events of the city: KVN (Game show - Club of Funny and Inventive People), Student Council, a theatre studio Anterpise under Veronika Ivanenko's direction. At the Theatre Festival in the town Pohvistnevo (Samarskiy region) he met the teachers from Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS) at workshops.After the Festival he left the University of Pereslavl and moved to Moscow to become a student of GITIS (Theatre Academy), the class of Leonid Heifetz in 2008. Since the second year he has begun acting in films. His first role was in TV-show Voices directed by Nana Jorjadze, an Oscar nominee in 1997. His first leading role that brought him first success was in TV-series Poka tsvetet paporotnik (directed by Evgeniy Bedarev) in 2012. While studying in GITIS he starred in 10 films.Right after graduating from GITIS he was accepted to the Moscow Theater Et Cetera under Alexander Kalyagin's direction. He played Graziano in Shylock (The Merchant of Venice) on the touring stage of Riga Russian Drama Theater. Five months after, he was invited to Ermolova's Moscow Theater run by Oleg Menshikov to rehearse Hamlet directed by Valeriy Sarkisov, premiered in December, 2013. Hamlet has been the most sold-out performance in the theater ever since.In the end of 2014, the head of Moscow Pushkin Theater - Evgeniy Pisarev and director Vladimir Mirzoyev offered him a role of Lopakhin in Cherry Orchard by Chekhov.In 2015 he played the lead in Fartsa TV-series - one of the first Russian TV-series ever streamed on Netflix. Also he played a charming police officer Grisha Izmailov in TV-series Politseyskiy s Rublyovki v Beskudnikovo (2017) (directed by Ilya Kulikov) viewed by millions and got him famous nationally.In November 2016 he created his first one-man dramatic show TOBEBORNAGAIN that was always a sold out show until its closure.In 2017 he starred in Prityazhenie by Fedor Bondarchuk which had an outstanding success in Russia (box office - more than 18 million USD). The film was released worldwide. Gogol' (2017), where he also played the lead - russian famous writer Nikolay Gogol, became the first TV-series in the world screened in cinemas. It won an award at the festival of the Indie Gathering International Film Festival and was awarded at the Accolade Global Film Competition in the Award of Excellence category.In 2017 he starred in his first international movie - Anna - a film by Luc Besson, released in 2019.During the next few years he starred in a number of movies that topped the box office in Russia and were released worldwide.In summer 2020 during the world pandemic he starred in his second international project Man of god filmed in Greece.Prizes and Awards:* Event of the Year of The Hollywood Reporter Magazine 2015 - Audience Award for Achievements in Film and Television Industry* GQ Magazine Man of the Year Awards 2018 - Actor of the Year* Golden Eagle Awards 2019 (winner) - Best TV Actor - Drama Series (Sparta)* Event of the Year of The Hollywood Reporter Magazine - Best Actor (Text)* Golden Eagle Awards 2020 (winner) - Best Actor - Motion Picture (Text)

The Iranian government has taken the row over "300" to the United Nations. In a letter to the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Iranian Ambassador Mohammad-Reza Dehshiri described the film as an "insult" to Iranian culture.

"It's very important for me not to remain silent, particularly about issues that are very sensitive in my view, and national honor and prestige are among them," Mitra Farokhzad, an Iranian living in the U.S. state of Arizona, told Radio Farda. "When I watched the movie's trailer and some parts of it, first I didn't understand it because it was very weird. But when I saw how they are portraying King Xerxes, I was shocked and thought, why are they giving such a [negative] picture of a great person?"

Some observers believe the Iranian government is exploiting the anger over the Hollywood production to advance its own political agenda. They say the authorities are provoking nationalistic feelings to get Iranians to rally in support of the government at a time when the Islamic republic is under international pressure over its nuclear program.

The U.S. film distributors, Warner Brothers, deny that "300" is deliberately meant to disparage any culture. They say it is a fictional work with the sole purpose of entertaining audiences. The film is proving something of a hit among the public, taking in $70 million in its first week.

Thermopylae is a narrow pass between the mountains and the sea, where the sheer numbers of the Persians was to no advantage. Repeatedly the Persians attacked, only to be thrown back with heavy casualties.

The film sticks closely to the account given by ancient historians, including Herodotus, a Greek. It's the portrayal of the two warring sides that has caused the antagonism. The Greeks are seen as noble defenders of Western culture, while the invading Persians are seen as decadent, irrational, and barbarous, with King Xerxes receiving a particularly unflattering portrait.

Queenan also notes that history is written by the victor, in this case the Greeks, who have elevated the story to the level of myth. He says the Persians have their own stories and, if they don't like the Greek version of Thermopylae, they could have written their own version.

"If the Iranians made a film about Genghiz Khan's invasion and destruction of Persia in the 13th century, then the Mongols might turn around and complain about the way they were portrayed," he argues.

"Sparta was a slave society, so the whole idea of them being upholders of democracy is kind of ridiculous," Queenan says. "The Athenians did not let women vote and had a lot of slaves, but still the situation [concerning democracy] was not completely out of control there like in Sparta, where they killed children. They killed deformed children. They killed off a lot of girls. It was a total militaristic society, so there is a direct line from the Spartans to the junkers and Prussian military, to the Nazis."

The battle of Thermopylae gave heart to the Greeks, who later that year won a decisive naval victory at Salamis. A victory on land followed the next year, and Xerxes withdrew, ending the Persian attempt to extend its empire into Europe.

THE COMPLETE STORY: Click on the icon to view a dedicated webpage bringing together all of RFE/RL's coverage of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

A heart surgeon by training, reformist Pezeshkian is a former health minister and multiterm lawmaker who was elected president earlier this month in a snap election held after the death of hard-line president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in May.

The first round of voting on June 28 had voter participation of 39 percent -- a record-low turnout for a presidential election in the history of the Islamic republic. The runoff vote on July 5, which saw Pezeshkian face off against ultraconservative candidate Saeed Jalili, saw the turnout rise to around 49 percent.

Government offices and banks throughout Iran were to remain closed on July 28 to avoid overtaxing power networks amid "extreme and unprecedented heat," which prompted similar shutdowns earlier this week, officials said. Temperatures reached nearly 50 degrees Celsius in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province and in the central Yadz Province, and were above 45 degrees in at least 10 provinces. The heatwave struck on July 24 before easing slightly, but the government ordered shortened working hours from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. at all government centers on July 27 after the Energy Ministry predicted "difficult conditions" for electricity production and supply. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Radio Farda, click here.

In an open letter years ago, Sheikheh and the other six suspects denied all charges and alleged that they were subjected to various forms of torture, including mock executions, sleep deprivation, and being hung from the ceiling.

Haqdar fled Iran after a leaked document allegedly prepared by the Intelligence Ministry listed his name among several authors and translators accused of fomenting sedition in the aftermath of the controversial 2009 presidential election.

Javaid Rehman, the UN's special rapporteur on the rights situation in Iran, said in a July 22 report that the summary and extrajudicial executions during 1981-82 and in 1988 amounted to crimes against humanity as well as genocide.

It is not the first time the mass executions have been described as genocide. But observers say Rehman's findings were an important step toward holding the Islamic republic accountable for its crimes.

The victims were "arbitrarily detained and subjected to systematic patterns of enforced disappearance, torture and summary, arbitrary and extrajudicial executions on religiously motivated and vaguely defined charges," the report said.

During the summer of 1988, an estimated 5,000 prisoners were secretly executed in prisons. Many of the victims were members of the MKO, which had aligned with Baghdad during the devastating 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

Former prison official Hamid Nouri in 2022 became the first, and only, Iranian official to be convicted for his role in the executions, though he was ultimately released as part of a prisoner swap between Stockholm and Tehran.

Gissou Nia, a human rights lawyer and director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council in Washington, says the special rapporteur's findings can set the stage for the UN to "establish some further inquiry that has a documentation and accountability function."

"What is incredibly important is that some of the perpetrators of the 1988 massacre continue to travel or have children in jurisdictions that do have the ability to prosecute atrocity crimes," Nia told RFE/RL.

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