With 'Searching,' 'Unfriended' and beyond, Timur Bekmambetov seeks a new cinematic language that mirrors our digital lives
LOS ANGELES - A few years ago filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov, one of Russia's top-grossing directors of all time, completely shifted his perspective on the language of movies.
The Russian Kazakh filmmaker had been telling stories the traditional way his whole career, breaking out internationally with the boisterous action and daring visuals of the 2004 vampire saga "Night Watch," 2008's "Wanted," 2012's "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" and in 2016, the ill-fated big-budget remake "Ben-Hur."
But Bekmambetov realized that he, like the rest of us, was spending much of his daily life glued to his devices. We build lives, careers and relationships around them; communicate through them; connect through them; learn about the world from them. We live digitally. Why weren't the movies reflecting our new reality?
"I don't know if it's bad or good, but I feel that half of my life - the most important events of my life - are happening on screen today," said Bekmambetov on a recent afternoon at his Los Angeles office. "I'm finding friends, losing friends, falling in
