comes a film that tells the story – Corriere.it

A political thriller set in the times of the Cold War hidden between the lines of the history of the diffusion of one of the most famous video games of the last century. Tetrisstarring Taron Egerton, had its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival underway in Austin, Texas and stadium cheers, laughter and applause greeted Jon S. Baird’s film, on Apple TV March 31.

Taron Egerton, whom audiences have come to know in the role by Elton John in Rocketman, plays Henk Rogers, the Dutch engineer who, having discovered Tetris, will embark on an adventure that will take him to the other side of the iron curtain in the difficult days preceding what will prove to be the dissolution of the Soviet empire. With a tourist visa, defying the strict surveillance of the KGB, he will succeed in acquiring the rights to the famous video game, beating the English competition and laying the foundations of a lifelong friendship with Alexey Pajitnov, the inventor of the game , who shortly afterwards left the Soviet Union to move with his family to San Francisco. The real Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov collaborated in the making of the film very faithful to what really happened – says Rogers -. Apart from one car chase, which was made spectacular for the amusement of the public, everything else is a representation of the events of the time. Including my bravado facing a business trip to a hostile country with the wrong visa and the subsequent fear of ending the rest of my days in a Soviet prison.

But the Soviet empire will not last long. These are the days of its disintegration, of corruption at the highest levels and of the race to hoard the nation’s wealth by what we now call oligarchs. Facts that will lay the foundations of the economic and political system of today’s Russia. Including the tragic events of the last year – continues Egerton -, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Someone wondered if this war could put the story we tell in a different light. I think not, the actions of a regime are one thing, the people who live under that regime are another. A rigid and binary attitude, the West is good, the rest of the world – Russia in particular – no, one of the great problems we are experiencing at the moment.

In short, even Hollywood, for once, can count a Russian among the good ones. Above all, this is the story of an extraordinary friendship for the times and places in which it takes place, of the friendship between two men belonging to two very distant geographical and ideological areas who, despite everything, have managed to put aside prejudices and create a bond so solid that it lasted a lifetime. Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov, shortly after the events narrated in the film, founded together the Tetris Company which still owns the rights to the video game today. They meet despite Rogers having moved to Hawaii, where he founded the Blue Planet Foundation, a charity organization for the use of alternative energy. In 2015, the foundation spearheaded a campaign to make Hawaii the first state in the world to pass a law that would set a goal of 100% renewable energy by 2045. Because — says Rogers — wherever you live, in a democracy or under a regime , in the East or in the West, we are all in the same boat, the same planet to save.