The Russian people have long been interested in the life and expression of criminals. Dmitry Zolotukhin, the director of this film, is following this curiosity. It all started with "Red Guelders", "The Gentlemen of Luck", followed by the series "We Don't Change the Place of a Meeting", which was very popular with the public. The project of "Zone Lyube" developed from the simple idea of shooting a "cinematic album" by collecting clips of the group "Lyube". The group itself was the producer of the film, inspired by the desire, in the words of its soloist Nikolai Rastorguyev, to "leave a trace through cinema". The director Dmitry Zolotukhin (known as an actor by many viewers for his role as Peter the Great in the film "Young Russia") had long dreamed of it. It faded before the professionalism of the interpreters of the texts and music and the authentic art of the soloists. From this point of view, "Zone Lyube" could claim the title of "musical film". However, the strictly musical passages do not represent the major part of the film. The main part of its dramatic force lies in the confessions of the prisoners interviewed by a television journalist (Marina Levtova). She did not only collect facts, but "the dreams that escape you from the zone", constantly translated into songs. By delving into the life of a group from the crime-ridden suburbs of Moscow, the author does not particularly address the scum of the slums, but the spectators who, through the roughness of the texts and music, the slang expression and the external appearance of the performers, perceive in this category of the population, the expression of their desires and frustrations. One of the songs is about the women's prison colonies that awaken the prisoners' passions, buried for years. One sequence reminds them through choreography of the sensual emotion aroused in the video supplement of the popular newspaper "Penthouse". It exudes a primitive and shameless eroticism, made of screams and filthy gestures, close to real life. Dovlatov recalls: "I discovered a stunning resemblance between the men of the camps and the free men. We spoke one and the same slang language. They sang only sentimental songs while enduring a lot of deprivations. We were often close to them and even interchangeable. Perhaps any prisoner could have played the role of a guard. Perhaps any jailer would have deserved prison..."
