In the summer of 2021, the ceremonial residence of the president of Ukraine was given over to an Indian film crew for almost two weeks. On the forecourt of Mariinskyi Palace they staged “Naatu Naatu”, a dance number for the film RRR. At the 95th Academy Awards the song won Best Original Song, the first Indian song ever to do so.
The film came to Kyiv because the scene needed a crowd of foreign faces. Bringing that many foreigners into India under the Covid rules was too difficult, the film’s cinematographer explained, and Ukraine was one of the first countries to reopen for filming. The producers were looking for a location outside the EU, where restrictions were tight at the time; Serbia and Georgia were also considered.
The Ukrainian side was handled by 435 Films. Its founder, Anna Palenchuk, had worked on seven Indian productions before this one. Access to the palace was negotiated directly with the President’s Office. The Indian unit flew in on two charters. More than fifty trained dancers, an orchestra and several hundred extras in period dress worked on the forecourt. The staging choreographer was Olena Shoptenko, a world champion in Latin dance.
The palace was not the only site with a state past on the route. The crew also filmed at Mezhyhirya. From 1935 the estate was a government residence, and in July 2007 a government order signed by Viktor Yanukovych as prime minister moved the residence and 137 hectares out of state ownership. Since the middle of November 2014 the estate has been a museum, and it takes film crews: Servant of the People shot there in 2015, and in September 2017 filming of Kruty 1918 began on the grounds.
The third location was Victoria Film Studios in Hurivshchyna, about 30 km west of Kyiv: more than 36 hectares and ten stages, the largest of them 2,500 square metres. Scenes that could not be finished in India were completed there. Large outdoor sets went up on the lot, reproducing ones already built in India, and the English members of the cast came to Ukraine for those scenes.
Filming of RRR wrapped on 26 August 2021, six months before Russia’s full-scale invasion. The film was made on a budget of 5.5 billion rupees and grossed 13–13.87 billion rupees worldwide.
All three Kyiv locations of the film, the palace, Mezhyhirya and the studio, are mapped with the history of each place on the page where RRR was filmed.
