Attractor: a beautiful story of resilience and innovation from Russia.

Attractor follows Dmitry Kalinin, a man who transformed a life changing accident into a source of purpose and innovation. After losing part of his left arm, he dedicated his life to helping inventors, engineers, and creators bring ambitious ideas to life. By building a unique research and engineering hub, he created opportunities for innovators from across the country to develop groundbreaking projects, from advanced prosthetics to electric transport and future mobility solutions. At its core, Attractor is an inspiring story about resilience, creativity, and the power of turning obstacles into opportunities.

We have here Alexei Nemov, director of thei s beaitiful documentary.

What first drew you to Dmitry Kalinin’s story?

I’m always on the lookout for a protagonist for a film. At the time, I needed someone with a unique set of character traits, someone who contributes to the public good and can inspire others through his own example. Then a friend told me about this person who leads over a hundred people, every single one of whom speaks of him with genuine love and respect. I was intrigued by the idea of humaneness as the main virtue, one of the hardest to develop in a person. That’s how I met Dmitry.

Attractor is a deeply motivational film. What message did you hope audiences would take from it?

The main message is clear: stay true to your dream and follow it despite the circumstances. Make progress toward your goal every day, even if it’s just small steps. Take a chance. If you betray your dream, you’re very likely to end up unhappy for the rest of your life. Is that really a risk worth taking?

Dmitry’s accident changed his life in a profound way. How did you approach telling that part of his story with both sensitivity and strength?

It was necessary to show viewers what happened to Dmitry, but at the same time, I didn’t want to retraumatize him by forcing him to relive the details. At one point, I asked if he could walk me through exactly how it happened, what he felt, how he coped. He said, “I can if needed, but I’ll have to prepare so I don’t trigger my PTSD.” That’s when I realized I had to handle this using vivid imagery rather than direct recounting. It’s not that it was particularly difficult for me, I put on my favorite song by The Smile, “Skrting on the Surface,” and, inspired by it, I edited that entire scene in one go. In the end, we had to cut more than half of it. It was a genuine act of co-creation.

The film explores not only resilience, but also the act of creation and innovation. Why was it important for you to balance these elements?

A director is a storyteller, and the main task is to tell the story in an engaging way. Some truths are universal: people need people, and a protagonist is revealed through his achievements. We make films for audience, and we can’t let them get bored. That said, audience is diverse, you can’t please everyone. That’s where balance becomes essential. While some viewers are reflecting on what they’ve seen, others are getting what they came for, and then those roles switch. I think it’s also important that we were shooting the film for two years, and most of the events unfold in the present, not the past. Audiences can feel that, and they trust it. The sincerity is what moves people.

And to what extent did you want to emphasize Dmitry’s early fascination with invention?

Dmitry is a child of the late Soviet era. Back then, it was honorable to be the master of your own destiny — that’s even reflected in the film’s soundtrack, performed by a children’s choir. Every boy at that time was into inventing or making things with his hands. There was a youth magazine called Modelist Constructor that covered all kinds of devices, experiments, and DIY projects. Boys read it with great enthusiasm. The bolder ones actually brought those ideas to life. That’s how a generation of curious young people was formed, kids who dreamed of becoming cosmonauts and engineers. Today, it’s a trend to be a blogger, dancer, or singer. Engineering just isn’t a priority for the younger generation. That’s a pity.

Dmitry built a space where engineers, inventors, and craftsmen can bring ambitious ideas to life. What impressed you most about that environment?

In places where ambitious, passionate people gather, especially from the same field, a synergy effect happens. The space itself starts to operate by different rules. One plus one becomes more than two. Fast exchange of knowledge and skills, a high concentration of intellectuals, it creates a unique environment. Once you’re in it, you inevitably change and adapt. I actually studied engineering myself, and that helped me while making the film. Let’s put it this way: I understood over 98% of the processes going on there, but the Design Bureau showed me the practical application of theoretical knowledge. That really impressed me. Hence the film’s tagline: "Practice is the criterion of truth."

The documentary includes several fascinating projects, from prosthetics to electric transport and aero taxi development. How did you decide which storylines to follow?

There are far more projects in the Design Bureau. And behind each one stands an amazing person, an engineer. At first, I was trying to film all the projects, getting to know each engineer and their work along the way. That’s how the front-runners emerged. Eventually, I had to choose just a few for the film. Some projects are very labor intensive but don’t show much visible results, there’s no spectacle. Other projects got shut down due to various circumstances, like the manned drone project. In the end, no more than 60% of what we planned to include actually made it into the film. And sadly, the most spectacular and central projects didn’t make the cut, for example, setting a world record for flight duration on a paramotor with Fyodor Konyukhov (famous Russian survivalist, voyager and marine explorer), or testing a giant eight-meter Tesla coil that shreds the landscape with music generated by lightning discharges. Cutting those stories was hard for me as a director. Making a documentary is always a compromise between what you envisioned and what ends up on screen. Life throws things at you, there’s no getting around it.

Each engineer in the film has a strong personality and a distinct vision. Was it challenging to balance their individual stories with Dmitry’s central journey?

Despite the apparent external chaos, the Design Bureau has a clear project management structure. Each engineer runs his own project, they make the decisions and bear the responsibility alone. That puts a huge burden on them. It’s hard to have to be skilled in design, management, marketing, PR, and so on, but it’s necessary. Each engineer deals with similar challenges, and of course, they’re deeply invested in their own projects and support their colleagues’ projects too. If someone has a solution to a related problem or a new idea, they hash it out right away. That exchange of experience and ideas often helps get a project out of a dead end. Two heads are better than one, as they say. But the final decision belongs to the engineer in charge of the project. In these kinds of teams, things tend to self-balance. Dishonest, envious, or outright mean people don’t stay long. The work environment quickly exposes them, and Dmitry knows how to make tough but necessary decisions.

Filming a documentary often changes the protagonist’s life significantly.

How did it affect Dmitry?

Dmitry answers:

Like many people, I’ve always been interested in film industry, not just as an art form, but from a production standpoint: what problems can it solve, what value can it bring? In other words, what is it truly capable of? Part of my motivation for taking part in this film was to satisfy that curiosity.

Now the film is released and we’re seeing the first results and audience reactions, I can confidently make a few observations.

First, there really is an audience for documentary filmmaking focused on engineering and production. We held the film premiere in the main movie theater of Russia and hosted a talk show after viewing. We got a lot of questions and positive feedback—people genuinely cared.

Second, we screened the film at a technical university and at a regular school. Among both the college students and the younger kids, several dozen listened wide-eyed and asked questions. It was truly wonderful. I believe this type of cinema can help some young people decide on their future careers.

Third, we tried submitting the film to international film festivals. Based on the wins and awards we’ve seen, there’s clearly interest from international audiences as well.

All these results inspire me to keep supporting and developing this type of films. It looks like it’s time for me to become a film producer too, creating positive, inspiring films that motivate people to achieve great things, both for domestic and broad international audiences. We’re dreaming of getting this film and future films onto streaming platforms around the world, and we’ll gladly accept any help with that. If people need this, then it’s worth giving it to them.

How did the village setting influence the atmosphere and meaning of the film?

For me as a director and cinematographer who specializes in observational filmmaking and nature cinematography, the village’s texture was a real gift. You have your protagonist, you have the texture, that’s a good formula to start a film. The contrast between rural life and cutting-edge innovation also works really well here. When I first came to this village, I was pleasantly surprised. It was clean and orderly. Beautiful. Fish in the ponds, peacocks walking through the meadow, and plenty of electric vehicles. That impressed me. It immediately felt like something unusual was going on, like there were people here actively shaping the space around them. At the same time, within walking distance, there’s a rich natural world: fox cubs that didn’t make the final cut, owls, for example. The natural beauty of the marshes, forests, and meadows, and the beauty of human engineering genius, all of it coexists beautifully and quite harmoniously.

Attractor speaks about perseverance, purpose, and building something meaningful. Did making this film change your own perspective on success?

Every film changes the director, especially when you’re not just “shooting” the film but “living” it. This film took two years to make, with editing happening alongside production. That’s plenty of time for something to shift or solidify in your worldview. Once again, I was reminded that behind any success the public sees lies a long string of failures, mistakes, and defeats, things that aren’t trendy to talk about in the world of the “successful and driven.” And you have to be brave enough to talk about them openly, without hiding them. That string of ups and downs, that is life itself. Courage is the deciding factor in success. That’s what I came to understand for myself.

What were the biggest challenges you faced during production?

A: Luckily for me, there weren’t many challenges. Probably the hardest part was the sheer speed of events and how completely unpredictable they were. The team is very active and passionate, interesting things often happened spontaneously or all at once. Sometimes I had to make a tough choice: stay in the workshop or head out to the test site for another trial. Then you find out that while you were away, something fascinating for the film happened, and it didn’t get captured. On top of that, the work runs almost 24/7. Some people prefer to work in the morning, others work on projects late at night. That irregular schedule and the constant sense of being on call, ready to jump at any moment, wears you down fast, but it’s also incredibly exciting. The right decision was to live at the design bureau during filming, especially since they’ve set up great conditions for it there.

How do you hope Attractor will impact young creators, engineers, and entrepreneurs?

I hope the film will inspire young creators and engineers to achieve great things. That was the film’s main mission from the start. And honestly, we’ve already seen that effect. To be truthful, the film was originally aimed at a slightly older audience, people already interested in engineering. The kind of people who follow Dmitry’s projects and other tech YouTubers but haven’t been able to build anything themselves due to lack of opportunity or resolve. But at the first screenings, it was a pleasant surprise to see how much interest there was among younger viewers. That fact actually pushed us to start showing the film in schools and universities, followed by discussions about engineering and creation.

The title Attractor is very evocative. What meaning does it hold for you, and how does it reflect the essence of the film?

The title came to us almost immediately. The “attractor” in the film is definitely Dmitry, he brings together a community of passionate, active people. And the project itself, the building and workshops of the private design bureau he built, is also an attraction, the place where intellectual work and business energy intersect and intertwine. When you’re there, you can feel it pretty easily. You always get the urge to act, right away. We tried many times to come up with a more unique title for the film, but none of them captured what happens there better than “Attractor.”

Is there a moment in the film that you feel best represents Dmitry’s spirit?

The most telling moment, I think, is when he talks about the aftermath of an explosion. He says: “When I started coming to in the ICU and began to realize, okay, there’s a problem with my eye, but I thought, without one eye, I can still see with the other, right? I can see! That’s already good. Do I still have my thumb and pinky? Yeah, that’s not bad either. As long as my brain is working, that means I’m alive.” So this is a man who, through his own carelessness, went through something like that, found the strength to get back up, and kept moving forward. That strength of spirit, that’s what’s so impressive.

What are you working on next?

I’m working on my next documentary films. I’m trying to stay focused on making inspiring, motivational films. I love it when audiences leave a screening feeling uplifted, when you can see that spark in their eyes. That personally motivates me. I’m also keeping an eye on life at the design bureau, following the projects and the engineers. I want to make a few short films about them and about the events that unfolded after this film. Viewers are curious about what happened next, how everyone’s doing. I believe it’s only right to satisfy that curiosity.

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/d98fde_18ac115aeeca40fb9b2092c1d1f2bcd1/1080p/mp4/file.mp4