Vladimir Sorokin to write screenplay for a film about Lenin

Acclaimed Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin will write a screenplay for a feature film about Vladimir Lenin, M24.ru reports. The film is expected to be released in 2017 to coincide with the centenary of the October Revolution of 1917.

The film will be produced by Yelena Yatsura, who has been working with Sorokin since the early Noughties when he wrote the screenplay for Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s multiple award-winning 4. Yatsura presented her current project at Fond Kino (Cinema Foundation of Russia), a government agency that provides state support to Russian fillmmakers. The film’s overall budget is expected to be around 450 million rubles ($8.7m). No actors have been cast for the leading role yet.

Vladimir Sorokin has been active as a writer, screenwriter and playwright since the early 1980s. He is one of the most renowned contemporary Russian writers, but his books have often caused controversy. In 2005 members of pro-Kremlin youth movement Idushie Vmeste (Walking Together) dumped copies of his books into a giant toilet bowl in front of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre to protest against “pornography” in his books.