On August 12, 2000, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk suffered an explosion and sank in the Barents Sea, eventually killing all 118 souls on board. Not all of them had to die, however. The disaster and Russian military’s “response” are the subject of the new docudrama Kursk (The Command is the English-language title), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6.
Immediately after the explosion, the Norwegian and British navies offered assistance, which was refused. The Russian military then told the press that most of the crew died within minutes of the explosion. But 9 days after the disaster, Norwegian and Russian divers found 24 bodies in the turbine room in the boat’s stern. The captain of the boat had written the names of the 23 sailors who survived the explosion and sinking of the sub.
Turns out that the Russian Navy had tried to rescue the men, starting 16 hours after the disaster, but shoddy equipment and lack of coordination proved fatal. Russian president Vladimir Putin was told that the Navy had the situation in hand and was about to rescue the sailors, so he didn’t interrupt his holiday at a presidential resort. Later, although the Navy insisted that a collision with another vessel had caused the explosion, a government report found that the crew had been both inadequately trained AND given erroneous safety instructions for the torpedoes being tested.
Director Thomas Vinterberg’s film, adapted by writer Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan) from Robert Moore’s book A Time to Die, tells the undersea story primarily from the perspective of sailor Mikhail Kalekov (Matthias Schoenarts). On land, Mikhail’s wife Tanya (Léa Seydoux) is battling the government to tell the truth and take action as the men slowly suffocate. Other stars include Colin Firth as a British commander and Max Von Sydow as Boris Yeltsin.
The Command/Kursk will be released in France and The Netherlands in November 2018 and in South Africa in April 2019. No word yet on a wider release.
Related Content