10 Most Insanely Perfectionist Film Directors

10. Ilya Khrzhanovsky Recreated Stalinist Russia On A Movie Set

 It’s easy to liken directors to little dictators of their own cinematic world- barking orders and marching around hoping to make other people conform to their idea of what the movie should be. However, some directors take it a little further to organising matching costumes and giving their crew a mission statement- occasionally a director turns a movie set into a gulag.

 This is precisely what happened on the set of Russia director Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s (director of Four) movie Dau. Dau tells the story of Soviet physicist Lev Landau and Khrzhanovsky hoped to recreate the isolation and paranoia of Landau’s Soviet Russia on the director’s set.

 Khrzhanovsky enforced a regime whereby crew members were only allowed to dress in Stalin-era clothes, eat Stalin-era food and were even paid in Soviet money. The set was to be referred to as “the Institute” at all times with all reference to modern technology such as cgi or cell phones prompting a fine deducted from the crew's pay. 

The director encouraged people to spy on their fellow crew members and report any infraction on the rules, mimicking the betrayal and paranoia of Soviet life. Shooting of the film lasted three years and Khrzhanovsky effectively took over the entire Ukrainian town of Kharkov to construct his enormous and totalitarian set. Production of the film began in 2006 and it is still unreleased as of 2015.