Russia in the movies: real or fake?

**Fake**

McMafia

The finale of the recent BBC series about an heir to a London-based expat family, who left Russia as a child and is forced to become the new kingpin of organised crime, takes place in Moscow… well, sort of. It was filmed in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. Not a bad choice - Belgrade is somewhat reminiscent of Soviet-era Moscow. The problem is, the series takes place in the present day, and modern Moscow has moved on. 

The switch becomes instantly clear once the characters descend into the subway that looks way too archaic, while the big ‘M’ logo and turnstiles are all wrong. Later, when Alex visits a residential neighborhood to purportedly look around his childhood apartment, it gets worse. The style and type of the building and those around it is not the sort that can be found in Moscow, nor could be found at the time when the character would have been a child. 

Some panoramic shots of real Moscow were used in the show, and some locations in Zagreb, Croatia - the country in which most of the show was actually filmed - also occasionally stood in for Moscow. 

Homeland

The scenes set in Moscow in season 7 were filmed in Budapest, Hungary. 

The alleged headquarters of the ‘GRU’ (the abbreviated former name for Russia’s military intelligence branch) in the show are located in a historic building downtown that looks antithetical to being “the most secure location in Russia” that the screenwriters talk it up to be. People walk on its outside ledges and barge in through windows. The real headquarters were purpose-built in recent years and a bit more menacing, as you can see – that sort of behavior wouldn’t cut there at all!

Many Russians remarked with disbelief at the confused license plates in the supposed Moscow episodes, that were either Hungarian or appeared to be a purposely jumbled nonsense.

Homeland is notorious for switching locations. Its earlier Lebanon storyline was filmed in nearby Israel, and Afghanistan in the upcoming season 8 is rumored to be set in Morocco. 

Killing Еve

Although some of the Russian fans of the show would say they were “not offended” by its portrayal of Moscow, it is not Moscow - the street scenes were filmed in Bucharest, Romania. And the alleged “Russian prison” was actually just a disused prison in none other than the United Kingdom.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

The blockbuster movie, a lot of which supposedly takes place in Russia, was filmed principally in the United Kingdom, and many of the locations in the movie that were, supposedly, Russia, are actually… in London! This includes the Russian villain’s headquarters, and a scene in what was supposed to be a Russian Orthodox Church - it’s filmed in a Catholic Church, London’s Westminster Cathedral (not to be confused with Westminster Abbey). Liverpool city center doubled as the rest of “Moscow”.

Chernobyl

Some parts of the multi-award winning HBO show were actually filmed in Ukraine - where many of its events take place in reality. Its principal filming location - what was acknowledged to have been for financial reasons - was in Lithuania. The country’s second-largest city, Kaunas, stood in for 1980s Moscow. But portraying Russia’s capital 30 years ago was fraught with difficulty - whether or not Kaunas looks the part, neither does today’s Moscow. 

Kaunas does have areas with Soviet-era architecture, and some Lithuanian homes would still retain elements of typical Soviet living conditions. But this is also one of the areas in which the series falls starkly short of realism. Its protagonist, academic Valery Legasov, once director of the all-powerful Kurchatov Institute, appears to share the squalor of common people’s living conditions in an old, dilapidated building - in which he also kills himself in the opening scene of the show. 

The real Legasov lived - and died - in a vast two-story single family home in the Schukino area of Moscow, not far from the Kurchatov institute. Built in the neoclassical style of the Stalin era, it was an exclusive residence by Soviet standards. The descendants continued to own the house in the post-Soviet era. 

So how did Legasov hide the tapes of his recollections from the KGB behind a removable brick in the wall then, the devoted viewers will ask? He didn’t. He left the tapes in his office at the Moscow State University, addressed to his friend - the editor-in-chief of Pravda newspaper. 

Quantum of Solace

In the film’s finale, James Bond travels to Kazan, Russia to settle a score. The snowy drab-looking barracks used were actually a disused military site in the United Kingdom. 

**Mostly fake**

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 

As you can probably guess, the scene in which Tom Cruise apparently blows up the Kremlin was not filmed anywhere near the Kremlin. This was filmed on set. The filming locations of most of the street scenes, as well as indoor locations of the would-be Kremlin, were in and around Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. The runners of the multi-million dollar franchise complained that actual Moscow was too expensive to film in, compared to the Central European city -- however, they did film some of the panoramic shots in Russia, including those of the Red Square and the [intact] Kremlin. 

A Good Day to Die Hard

The fifth installment of the Die Hard series was widely rumored to be filming in Moscow, but those turned out to be premature - the producers apparently scouted Moscow locations and tried to make it work, but couldn’t, citing it was not feasible. They did dispatch a secondary crew to film a few things, including panoramic shots and the Ukraine hotel from the outside. Principal filming was moved to Budapest, Hungary, that stood in for much of Moscow in the film. 

In this movie, Chernobyl was also filmed in Hungary, just outside Budapest - perhaps that explains to the skeptics how the characters managed to arrive there about 30 minutes after leaving “Moscow”! Otherwise, it is supposed to be in a different country and hundreds of miles away, a fact the movie quite casually ignores. 

Resident evil - Retribution

Some part of the zombie franchise’s final installment takes place in “the simulation” of Moscow, and background scenes for it were partly filmed in real Moscow. However, much of what ended up in the movie is, indeed, a computer simulation, where the position of buildings and the location of Arbatskaya metro station do not match reality. License plates on the cars are all “funny”. The crew were permitted to film some background scenes in the actual Moscow Metro subway, and the contours of Arbatskaya (line 3) station into which the characters plunge in their car, were based on the real ones. The principal metro station scene in an adjoining station was apparently later shot in…. Toronto, Canada! 

**Mostly real**

Goldeneye

The James Bond classic with Pierce Brosnan spared no expense in its famous “tank chase scene” in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Most of the shots of the city in the scene are real and were filmed on location with a real tank, although understandably some of them, where most of the destruction occurs, were filmed on a reconstructed set.

**Real**

Bourne Supremacy

This installment of Matt Damon’s action franchise is almost unique in that the Moscow-based scenes were actually filmed on location - in Moscow! The car chase features believable ambience and actual Russian cars - although, that was sixteen years ago, and today’s Moscow no longer has these Volga taxis.

Even more endearingly, the scene where Bourne visits a high-rise residential neighborhood is genuine, filmed in the Krylatskoe neighborhood in the West of Moscow. 

The Americans

While many Russians will have much to say about the realism (or not, as the case may be) of the show about Russian spies overall, Moscow as it appears in Season 5 is real. It was, of course, shot now, so real present-day Moscow in the show plays the part of itself 30 years younger. In some media interviews, the producers reminisced about the difficulty of finding places that look old and unaltered enough that they pass off as the 1980s.