Salon readies Ivan and the Dogs

UK production outfit Salon Pictures has entered pre-production on Andrew Kötting’s feature adaptation of Hattie Naylor’s stage play Ivan and the Dogs.

Written by Naylor and produced by Nick Taussig and Paul Van Carter of Salon, Soda Pictures has boarded UK distribution of the experimental film, which is based on the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who in 1996 walked out of his Moscow apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs.

The shoot is due to get underway in early 2015 and will take in London, Moscow and Chile with casting currently underway.

Funding comes from the BFI - who also gave development support - and SEIS Salon Workshop.

Artist and filmmaker Kotting previously directed 2012 doc Swandown, which played at CPH: Dox, and 2009 drama Ivul, which played at Locarno.

Kötting said: “This very dark and deeply disturbing story is about the innate human desire to survive at all costs from within a cave of ongoing dreams. It will be the third and final part of my Earth Trilogy.”

Naylor told Screen: “Andrew and I first found each other in the dark recesses of the basement of the Slade School of Art where we bonded as a handful of students experimenting in sound and film. When he approached me to adapt Ivan and the Dogs I knew it could not be in more perfect and exceptional hands.”

Salon’s Paul Van Carter added: “We are very excited to be working with Andrew Kötting, an intense and visceral filmmaker, the heir to dissidents Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman, and in Ivan and the Dogs we finally found the work that we could produce with Andrew.”