The script by writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya about the life of the doctor Friedrich-Joseph Haas, who treated prisoners in Russian prisons in the 19th century, is filmed in the West. About this, the writer herself said RTVI in the program “Chroniques du Nouveau Monde”. From which company such an offer was received, she did not specify.
“Now I have a sentence hanging, which fascinates me terribly. I don’t know if it’s implemented or not. This work is related to Dr. Haas, about which I wrote, and I have the screenplay , in fact, wrote. I would be very happy if such a scenario came to pass,” she said.
When asked if this offer had been made by “some of the western companies”, Ulitskaya replied: “Sort of”.
According to the writer, despite his “first and only literary training” in the form of a scriptwriting course at the Maison du Cinéma, his “destiny with cinema did not work out”. As Ulitskaya explained, out of the many scripts she wrote, only one was directed, so at some point she realized she didn’t want to work in a field where she would depend of a great team of people.
“And I moved on to my writing job, where there’s no other participants but me and the office. Because whenever you work for an industry like film or theater (or) don’t any other, you end up on a team. And I prefer personal work, not teamwork,” the writer added.
The premiere of the opera “Doctor Gaaz”, the libretto of which was written by Ulitskaya and the music of Alexei Sergunin, took place in April 2016 at the Moscow musical theater “Helikon-Opera”. The production is dedicated to the life story of Doctor Friedrich-Joseph Haas (1780-1853), a European specialist and humanist who, during the reign of Nicholas I, treated prisoners in Russian prisons and improved their conditions. For this, even during his lifetime, he was called a righteous man and a saint. In 2018, Haaz was beatified by the pope.
