The American film industry has gained a new ally: Russian film guru Aleksandr Rodnyansky, who has recently co-produced the latest drama from Hollywood bad boy Billy Bob Thornton. Jayne Mansfield’s Car will have its world premiere in Berlin next week.

­The psychological drama set in 1969 Alabama and revolving around eight characters – two families, one British and the other American – is vying for the Golden Bear award at the Berlinale International Film Festival.

Rodnyansky says that working with Bad Santa star Thornton on Jane Mansfield’s Car was a “turning point” for him.

“I believe in personalities and in the human talent to tell stories,” the producer told RT.

“I read his script and I loved it. I understood it very well. We started discussing how the movie was going to be done by Billy Bob. I decided to follow his creative vision and spent the whole shooting period on set,” he added.

“The whole experience [of Jane Mansfield’s Car] made me think seriously about American film industry and of bringing together the financial production and creative resources from both Russia and the US in order to produce great movies that would make people laugh and cry,” Rodnyansky explained.

There are no Russian films in the competition program of the Berlinale festival this year, and there is probably a reason why.

“Our genre movies are not good enough to travel, while the arty segment is isolated. Our so-called ‘auteur movies’ seldom relate to audiences outside of Russia. We need our great writers and directors to be communicative enough to meet expectations of wider audiences in Europe, in America and in Japan. We need our genre movies to be better quality, and that’s pretty much our responsibility,” Rodnyansky said.

The challenge that the leading Russian producer has recently taken up is to introduce Russian movies into an international context.

“In terms of financing, of creative resources and production capabilities Russian film industry has all potential to be part of international context, not less than any European country, and not less than China.”

Together with US Media Talent Group, Rodnyansky set up a $120-million investment fund to produce movies for the American market.

“The weakest part of the Russian film production industry is that our movies don’t travel a lot. To make them travel we need to be part of international distribution, sales production and context. So I’m trying to put together my American activities – the movies I produce in the US. At the same time I’m trying to bring a lot of Russian professionals on set for them to learn, to see how it works and explore their opportunities in an English-speaking world, as well as think about how to make Russian movies attractive enough cross the borders. We need to learn a lot, because our market is growing much faster than our minds.“

­Valeria Paikova, RT