Two years ago critics differed in their assessment of the film. Some were severe: "It's all about ménages à trois, lesbians and polygamists". Some were ecstatic: "An incredibly beautiful, exquisite film, a haven for the soul". All this is about His Wife's Diary by Aleksei Uchitel.

— Aleksei, you dared touch the untouchable, to rethink the image of an idol – Ivan Bunin. You talked about a period of his life, kept secret by biographers, when he felt painfully embarrassed and lost. This is probably the reason why a portrait of a great man sucked into the quagmire of personal relationships was not accepted by many of the viewers.

— Firstly, the film has more fans than foes. In my opinion, many critics were simply unable to broaden the horizons about Bunin the writer. "How can it be?! He's world-famous, he's got all these titles – he could never have behaved so frivolously!" But the truth is, we were easy on him. It is public knowledge that Ivan Alekseyevich didn't mind strong language, drank quite a bit and was by no means an angel. Which is normal: a person is interesting for his natural qualities, not as a static figure without a glitch. When we were about to start shooting, we showed the screenplay to the State Cinematography Commission, and they said the same thing: why are you dragging out a great man's dirty laundry? Still, the screenplay, though slightly altered, remained unchanged. ... If we do nothing but talk about how remarkable a person and a writer he was, without knowing the train of his life's events and his reactions to other people, we will never truly understand this phenomenon called Bunin.

— The author of the screenplay is Dunya Smirnova. Could you have written it yourself?

— No, I'm in a different business. But we were continuously discussing the screenplay with the author. It was not our first time working together – there had been Giselle's Mania and The Last Hero, among others. Dunya is the daughter of Andrei Smirnov, and to some degree she'd projected her father's psychological makeup onto Bunin, whose character he plays. The similarity was just stunning.

During the filming Andrei and I often argued what Bunin was like. How did he talk, walk, move? And we agreed that we had to start with the man that was playing him. For example, how would Smirnov the actor react to a 25-year-old beauty's telling him that she was leaving him? Physical likeness, acting skill – those things create the background. On the foreground no acting was called for, just show your natural emotional reaction. I think that Smirnov had succeeded in this. ...

By the way, I was also pleasantly surprised and charmed by the fact that even abroad – and we've shown the film at six festivals, including American ones – viewers that had no idea who Bunin was were emotionally touched by Smirnov's portrayal. For them it was just a story of the last years of some Russian writer's life – and it made them feel. That's what matters. ...

— Aleksei, I know that you have other screenplays in the works.

— Screenwriter Aleksandr Mindadze wrote a wonderful thing called Dreaming of Space. It's about people in the 1950s, one of whom is Yuri Gagarin. There are other plans too. For example, I'm very interested in the character of Saltychikha – a strong, powerful, well-educated woman, but at the same time deeply unhappy. This figure of Russian history has not been studied at all.

— Does your unusual last name help you?

— My father comes from Tiraspol, where, like in Russia, they used to give family names according to what a person was or did. What I really am is a student, not a teacher. Although my creative team privately calls me Headmaster, and sometimes they put a sign on the cutting room's door that says "Teacher's Office".

*TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: "Uchitel" in Russian means "teacher".