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Child 44 Based On Real-life Serial Killer

Child 44 is directed by Daniel Espinosa (Safe House, Snabba Cash aka Easy Money). Screenplay was written by Richard Price (Clockers, “The Wire”). Based upon the novel by Tom Rob Smith. Produced by Ridley Scott (Prometheus, Exodus: Gods and Kings), Michael Schaefer, and Gregory Shapiro. 44 children have been killed, hanging fascinating mystery, the truth it is the wrath.

TOM ROB SMITH’s Bestselling Novel

A sumptuous period thriller encompassing themes of power, love, betrayal and murder, Child 44 is loosely based on the crimes of real-life serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. Also known as “The Butcher of Rostov,” Chikatilo was convicted of murdering and mutilating 52 women and children in Soviet Russia in the early 1950s. Novelist Tom Rob Smith’s fictionalized version of the grisly case met with resounding critical and popular acclaim upon publication in 1998. Winner of the Crime Writers Association’s CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award and translated into 26 languages, Child 44 became the first in a trilogy that now includes The Secret Speech and Agent 6.

A Bureaucrat with a Conscience

For Academy Award® nominee Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Best Actor, 2011), the weary provincial police chief General Mikhail Nesterov he portrays in Child 44 embodies the moral compromises many citizens had to make in order to survive Stalinist-era politics. “There was so much emotional, physical, and psychological terror in Stalinist society that a character like Nesterov just turns a blind eye to it all,” he says. “The Soviet system won’t allow for evil capitalist things like murder, killing and prostitution, to the point that Leo and Nesterov have become, in a sense, ethically and emotionally straight-jacketed. If your thinking goes just a little bit off the party line, Stalin could banish you, which is what happened to Nesterov when he gets sent to this rural village, Vosk.”

By the time Leo arrives in Vosk, Nesterov has acclimated himself to the reduced circumstances of local militia chief. “He’s not as much under the microscope and the watchful eye of Moscow,” says Oldman, who previously navigated Cold War moral ambiguity in the 2011 spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. “Nestorov has made a nice little nest for himself. He has a community, a family and his men. Leo’s appearance threatens all of that.” When Leo explains that he’s trying to track down the killer who’s been dumping the bodies of his young victims along the railroad tracks, Nesterov, who has children of his own, rises to the occasion. “Leo re-ignites his conscience,” says Oldman.

Soviet Fashion

With eight Academy Award® nominations plus a win for A Room with a View, costume designer Jenny Beavan has worked on her fair share of period dramas set in England, including Sherlock Holmes and The King’s Speech. But she had a chance to explore new terrain when she delved into Soviet-era fashion for Child 44.

Once she determined the look she wanted for the civilian characters, Beavan scoured the Internet for warehouses stockpiled with old clothes. Then she enlisted wardrobe breakdown artist Joanna Weaving and her team of Czech crafters to give the clothes a well-worn appearance. “

For the military outfits worn by Leo, Vasil and their colleagues, Beavan engaged a Polish manufacturer.

SYNOPSIS

Based on author Tom Rob Smith’s best-selling novel, Child 44 is a gripping thriller set against the backdrop of 1953 Stalinist Russia. A proud product of the Soviet system, orphan-turned-war-hero Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy) has risen through the ranks of the MGB, the state’s domestic security apparatus, to become a star investigator of dissident activity. When he and sadistic colleague Vasil (Joel Kinnaman) capture suspected spy Anatoly Tarasovich Brodsky (Jason Clarke), the “traitor” names Leo’s own wife, beautiful schoolteacher Raisa (Noomi Rapace), as a co-conspirator.

Forced to investigate Raisa on suspicion of treason, Leo also takes on the case of a boy found carved up alongside railroad tracks. Despite evidence to the contrary, Leo describes the death as an accident to the boy’s father, MGB Agent Alexei Andreyev (Fares Fares) because Stalinist decree dictates, “There is no crime in Paradise.”

When Leo refuses to denounce his wife, MGB Commander Major Kuzmin (Vincent Cassel) exiles the couple to the grim industrial city of Volsk.

Confined to a one-room hovel and stripped of rank, Leo and Raisa learn that dozens of other dead boys have suffered gruesome “accidents” near railroad tracks under almost identical circumstances as Alexei’s son. Teaming with local Police Chief General Nesterov (Gary Oldman), they sneak back to Moscow and pursue clues before zeroing in on mild-mannered factory worker Vladimir Malevich (Paddy Considine).

Desperate to rein in his former colleague, the increasingly psychotic Vasili tries to stop Leo and Raisa before they catch the child murderer, who has no place in Stalin’s supposedly crime-free Communist society. In the end, only one man survives the spectacular forest showdown between hero, pedophile and bureaucrat. But despite the victims and the damage done, the Soviet State remains immune to Leo’s inconvenient truths.