Is it true that a documentary about Norilsk will be released on Netflix?

Recently, Russian Internet users were surprised by reports that the streaming giant Netflix would release a full-length documentary about life in Norilsk. A trailer and poster even appeared on the Internet. We checked whether this is a real project.

The news about the upcoming documentary film about the Russian city of the Krasnoyarsk Territory appeared in March 2023 and was widely distributed across social networks and the media. For example, in the Netflix fan public on VKontakte there is a publication with a poster of “Norilsk” at the time of writing this text dialed over 33,000 views. The post says: “Showrunners Chris Smith and Ian Sikora intend to show residents of warmer climes how difficult living conditions can be in an industrial city with abnormal weather conditions. The project will affect both the economy of the region and people’s opinions about life in the city.” In the NR community (278,000 views) added, that “social network users are already waiting for the release of the film, and some are sincerely surprised at how one can live in the Far North.” The poster was also posted by the public “Abnormal"(60,000 views), "Say 13 – Music 2023» (21,000), and the promotional trailer was shared by the community PostNews (69,000), "I live in Krasnoyarsk"(33,000), "Krasnoyarsk Live" (19,000), "Norilsk residents"(14,000), etc. At the same time, most publications indicate that the release of the tape will take place on April 17, but occasionally another date is found - April 13.

On Telegram, the channels “Live broadcast"(648,000 views), "Truthfulness"(234,000), "Rhymes and punches"(188,000), "Feed of the day" (68,000), "Federation"(68,000) and Anton S Live (58,000). Among the media, the Krasnoyarsk editorial office of the newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda", Lenta.ru (in its social networks here And here), "Channel 7 Krasnoyarsk", as well as the publication "News from the planet" And GorNovosti.ru.

For starters, if you look closely at the film's trailer, you'll find a lot of mistakes and conflicting details. So, the poster actually states that the release of the film is scheduled for April 17, while at the end of the video a different date is announced - April 13. Additionally, there are many inaccuracies in the trailer's subtitles:

• inconsistency with the speaker's words. For example, the text says “tinier deposits of bass and precious and metals” (“smaller deposits of bass and precious and metals”), but it said “Taimyr deposits of base and precious metals” (“Taimyr deposits of base and precious metals”);
• numerous typos (chnce instead of chance, guarantess instead of guarantees and sustainable instead of sustainable);
• missing words (focus instead of our focus, alliance instead of this alliance);
• once the name of Norilsk was written with a lowercase letter (norilsk);
• Some sentences do not begin with a capital letter and do not end with any punctuation.

It's hard to imagine that editors wouldn't have noticed so many mistakes in a two-minute trailer for a Netflix project.

Moreover, there is even a typo in the title of the video on YouTube, where it says “directed and wrinter Ján Šikora,” although the correct name would be “directed and written by Ján Šikora” or “director and writer Ján Šikora.” At the same time, in the database of the world’s largest movie site IMDb there is no one named Ján Šikora, but There is three people with a similar name (Jan Sikora), but none of them have any credits as a director or screenwriter.

There is no trailer for the documentary about Norilsk on the official YouTube- Netflix channel. The video is not mentioned in social networks and on website American streaming service, as well as in Instagram*-account and on website studio of filmmaker Chris Smith, who really produced for Netflix several successful documentary projects, including “Tiger King”. In fact, the trailer for "Norilsk" March 10, 2023 appeared (no longer available) on the channel Joel-KF with less than 100 subscribers and 15 rollers, which received a maximum of several hundred views. How reads The profile description is in Hungarian; its author creates remixes and video clips mainly on the topic of video games.

According to the Krasnoyarsk service of the newspaper “Arguments and facts", some people who watched the trailer noticed that the video consists of frames from other videos about Norilsk. Thus, YouTube user Yuri Redchits wrote: “Why did Netflix take my footage that I filmed myself? My copyright is being violated, I did not give them consent.” On channel There is rare video called "Column (Norilsk) Norilsk winter", uploaded to the site 11 years ago, and some scenes from this video actually ended up in the viral trailer (for example, moments on the timestamps 4:58 And 6:21 correspond to trailer scenes at 1:42 and 1:54). Moreover, the trailer for the supposed Netflix film uses a lot of footage from trailer another documentary - the Canadian full-length film "On the Nickel Moon"2017 from director François Jacob and the studio Les Films Camera Oscura.

They know nothing about the creation of the film and the authorities of Norilsk. Deputy Head of the press service department of the city administration Yulia Okuneva told to the Arguments and Facts correspondent that the streaming service did not request permission to film: “There were no requests from Netflix or its representatives to film in the city. We also saw these messages, but we don’t have any information about it.”

Interesting details were shared by the Krasnoyarsk journalistic Telegram channel “Borus" In addition to the poster from the now inaccessible Instagram account NorilskTheFilm, they showed a page of a film about Norilsk with a typo in the first line (dokumentary instead of documentary). Borus also reported that someone created a page for the film on Wikipedia (already deleted), where it was indicated that the film was in Hungarian, despite the English-language trailer (although a Hungarian-language Instagram feed could be seen in the video). Krasnoyarsk journalists called the documentary about Norilsk a “skillful fabrication” (which is difficult to agree with, given all the errors and inaccuracies) and believe that someone successfully joked: “One can only guess: who and why?”

The description of the Joel-KF YouTube channel, where the trailer was posted, contains links to the author’s pages in Twitter And Instagram (in the NorilskTheFilm account it was written that this was the director’s profile). According to the Twitter description, Jan Šikora is from Slovakia and was born in 2003. On the night of March 13-14, he posted a story on his Instagram in Russian, where he announced that the documentary about Norilsk would be released not on Netflix, but on other platforms. Around the same time, Shikora posted on Twitter wrotethat the film has been cancelled.

On the evening of March 14, “Verified” talked with Shikora, who introduced himself to us as the director of a documentary film from Hungary. He said that he chose the city of Norilsk by mistake, because he did not know that a year ago Netflix stopped work in Russia. According to Shikora, he made the film at home and initially expected to release it on Netflix, and now he will allegedly post it on some free platforms (although he previously announced the cancellation of the project). According to his idea, the film was supposed to be a collection of other people's video materials. When we asked how he was going to release the film on Netflix without buying the copyright, Shikora replied that he lied about the rights, so finishing the film would be problematic. After our question about creating a page on Wikipedia, he blocked us.

On Shikora’s social networks you can find other projects on which he allegedly worked with Netflix and other services. For example:

• he posted his teaser trailer Amazon Prime Video adaptation of the video game Dead Space;
• showed personal poster Mike, who he played in the series based on the game The Last of Us from HBO;
• shared poster Netflix's Slenderman, for which he wrote the screenplay;
• published screenshot Variety article that actor Jan Szikora will play in the series “The Wheel of Time” from Amazon Prime Video.

In reality, Shikora himself created all these materials and never participated in the creation of such projects.

Thus, the documentary about Norilsk will not be released on Netflix and was never planned by this streaming platform. This whole story was invented by a person who had previously created fake humorous materials on various projects of streaming services.

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: Ján Šikora

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

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