Screenlife: In Search of a New Film Language

In 2015, a Hollywood film was released that changed people’s ideas about how movies can be made: in the thriller «Unfriend»—everything the viewers saw—was a computer screen. The film’s action unfolded on a desktop among folders and open internet tabs, social networks, and search engines. The director and producer Timur Bekmambetov came up with the idea of bringing our lives to device screens—computers and smartphones—and he also gave a name to this new film format: screenlife.

Since then, films in the new format have collected tens of millions of dollars worldwide at the box office and won awards at the most prestigious film festivals around the world—from Berlinale to Sundance. The ideologist of screenlife, Timur Bekmambetov, together with Russian and Hollywood colleagues, will explain how to make films on the screen of your computer and phone—from the idea and script to filming and editing.