Going Vertical


Going Vertical, also known as Three Seconds, is a 2017 Russian sports drama film directed by Anton Megerdichev about the 1972 Olympic Men's Basketball Final of the Soviet national basketball team over the 1972 U.S. Olympic team, ending their 63-game winning streak, at the Munich Summer Olympic's men's basketball tournament.
Upon its release on December 28, 2017 by Central Partnership, Going Vertical achieved critical and commercial success. With a worldwide gross of, Going Vertical is the highest-grossing modern Russian film of all time.

Plot

The year was 1970. The senior men's Soviet Union national basketball team had changed its head coach. The team's new head coach, Vladimir Garanzhin, who was also the head coach of the Leningrad based BC Spartak basketball club, of the USSR Premier League; said at a press conference that at the Munich Summer Olympic Games, the Soviet Union was going to beat the U.S. men's national basketball team. The statements of the coach frightened Soviet sports officials, for whom their main goal was to perform strongly at the world's biggest sporting stage, in the year of the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union, and keep their posts.
Vladimir Garanzhin completely changed the composition of the Soviet team, and it was no longer dominated by CSKA Moscow players, but instead the players from several different clubs of the country. Garanzhin also began training the team with new coaching techniques; he needed to inspire the team, and convince the players that they could beat the American team.
It was the night of 9 to 10 September 1972. The city of Munich, which had survived a terrorist attack three days earlier, had continued to host sports competitions at the Summer Olympic Games. The long-awaited finale of the XX Olympic Summer Basketball Tournament had finally arrived. The two final teams, as had been predicted by Garanzhin, were the USSR and U.S. teams. Up to the decisive game, both teams were unbeaten. And the outcome of the dramatic final match was decided in the last three seconds of the game...

Cast

Production

Filming

began in August 2016, in Moscow.
The last scenes of the film - the scenes of the final match of the 1972 Olympic Games basketball tournament, between the USSR and the US national teams - were filmed in the first filming days. Instead of filming a crowd of fans, advertising, and other attributes of the Munich match, the shooting technique used the "chromakey" technology.

Release

Premiere of the film took place on December 22, 2017 in the cinema "October" in Moscow. The film was released in wide distribution in the Russian Federation on December 28, 2017.
The television premiere of the film took place on February 23, 2019, Defender of the Fatherland Day on the Russia-1 television channel.

Marketing

In May 2017, a movie teaser trailer was released. The first trailer was released on June 14th..

Reception

Box office

According to the United Federal Automated Information System on Movie Screenings in Cinema Halls, the gross of the film, as of 2018, amounted to more than ₽2.9billion, making the picture the higgest-grossing film in the history of modern Russian film distribution. However, due to devaluation of Russian ruble against the US dollar in 2018 the final value of Russian box office after 43 weeks of distribution was only around $46.5 million.
It also became the highest-grossing Russian film in China, where it grossed. That brought the film's worldwide gross to.

Critical response

Even before the release of the film, it aroused sharp criticism from Evgenia Kondrashina and Aleksandra Ovchinnikova, and Yuri Kondrashin. In their opinion, the authors of the film plunged into their private lives, and included information about it in the script without their consent.
On April 19, 2017, the mother and son of Kondrashina and Ovchinnikov filed against Studio "Three T Productions" by Nikita Mikhalkov in the Presnensky District Court of Moscow the claim “On the prohibition of the dissemination of information about private life”, which the plaintiffs were refused in satisfaction of by a court decision of September 4, 2017.
On January 10, 2018, in an interview with RBC media holding, Going Vertical, the director Anton Megerdichev said that he talked several times with Kondrashina and Ovchinnikova and after talking with them he had the feeling that they understood each other, but at the same time time, he got the impression that they "agreed on something". Megerdichev also said that he treats the characters of the film with “such respect as one can imagine,” and also said the following: “Not a single person who did the Going Vertical intended to offend and insult... And, on the contrary, elevate and make the heroes of the team, and they went all the way to the last to find some kind of contact ”.
On January 25, 2018, Kondrashina and Ovchinnikova in an interview with Rosbalt confirmed that they had met with the creators of the tape. However, according to Ovchinnikova, the relatives initially answered them that they were against the approval of this scenario: “Tears? Emotions? They have achieved this. But there is no historical truth there”, said Ovchinnikova.

Awards and prizes

On January 6, 2018, the film received the Golden Quarter movie award from the site of the independent film magazine 25th Frame in the 2017 Best Russian Film nomination.
On February 15, 2018, at the Chart Dozen Award ceremony, the creators and actors of the film Going Vertical received an award in the special upcoming movement Upward from the hands of the Hero of Russia cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky.
On January 27, 2019, the film won the Golden Eagle Award for 2018 in the nominations for Best Actor in a Movie, Vladimir Mashkov, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Kirill Zaitsev, Best Cinematography Igor Grinyakin, Best Film Editing, “The Best Work of the Sound Engineer” Aleksey Samodelko, “The Best Visual Effects”.