The Silver Skates (film)

The Silver Skates (Russian: Сере́бряные коньки́, romanized: Serebryanye konki, also in some languages known as City of Ice) is a 2020 Russian epic period romantic adventure film directed by Michael Lockshin in his feature directorial debut, with a screenplay written by Roman Kantor, and produced by Petr Anurov. The film is based on the American novel Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge.

The story is mainly set in 1899 and New Year 1900 in Saint Petersburg, capital of the Russian Empire. The city's ice-covered rivers and canals act as broad avenues, traversed on ice-skates and sleds, with markets and winter festivals on the ice. Social classes mix in this winter wonderland, and the courier Matvey crosses paths with the aristocrat Alisa, who is an intellectual girl from a noble family. The film stars Fedor Fedotov and Sonya Priss, alongside Kirill Zaytsev, Yuri Borisov, Aleksei Guskov, Severija Janusauskaite, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Timofey Tribuntsev, and Alexandra Revenko in supporting roles. Also it includes the Irish actress Cathy Belton and French actor Denis Lavant. Principal photography lasted from January to May 2019.

The Silver Skates was chosen as the opening film of the 42nd Moscow International Film Festival, where it premiered on October 1, 2020. A limited theatrical release (due to the covid pandemic) was scheduled for December 10, 2020. The film was also shown in IMAX cinemas. The film collected more than 100 million rubles for the highest-grossing opening weekend of its film screening and brought the total amount of 490.1 million rubles to the show times, despite the covid epidemic quarantine in Russia, compared to a production budget of 500 million rubles.

The global rights to the film were acquired by Netflix. The Silver Skates is the first Russian film to be released on the platform in the Netflix Originals category. The film was No. 1 in many territories, and in the top-10 in Europe and the US.

The film won Best Picture awards at both the Golden Eagle Awards and Producer's Guild awards (2020).