“If I fail, I want to fail because of me. If we succeed, I want to succeed because of us.” —Vlad Yudin (vladar.com)
“You can’t become best friends with the subject of a documentary. You have to make it objective. I like for the audience to make their own decisions.” —Vlad Yudin
Today’s guest is Vlad Yudin, a Russian-born documentary filmmaker best known for the trilogy of Generation Iron bodybuilding films. His Vladar Company makes and producers lots of films in the fitness industry and we unpack a lot of what makes him a particularly free spirit.
In case you’re new to the show, I should mention that this is The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass writers, filmmakers, and producers about the art and craft of telling true stories, how they got to where they are, what struggles they deal with, and how they still manage to get the work done.
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Pulling straight from Vlad’s bio on the vladar.com website:
Born and raised in Central Russia, filmmaker Vlad Yudin grew up in Moscow before moving to New York where he would pursue his career in film. In 2008, Yudin formed The Vladar Company to create a platform for production and distribution of various feature and documentary projects. Some of the produced titles include “Last Day Of Summer,” “Big Pun: The Legacy” and most recently the documentary box office hit, “Generation Iron” that went on to become one of the top five documentary’s at the box office for The Vladar Company in 2013. Vlad will continue to produce under the Vladar banner as well as handle the operations and overlook the expanding catalogue of Vladar’s media content.
Visit vladar.com for a list of all the movies he produces and to find links on where to find them. The first Generation Iron film and the Ronnie Coleman film are my faves, FWIW.
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