MOSCOW, Feb 27 — It’s a sci-fi film set on a planet that’s still in the Middle Ages and that a group of modern scientists is studying. Can they succeed in accelerating its development?

Filmed over a six year period, three hour black and white epic “Hard to Be a God” is the work of influential Russian director Alexey German.

Its plot revolves around one of the scientific cohorts, Don Rumata, tasked with helping the crude civilisation to progress.

If their status as intellectuals did not make them vulnerable enough, the observers’ credo prevents them from using violent means to advance their cause — but it looks like Don Rumata’s had enough.

First shown at the 2013 Rome Film Festival, where German was posthumously given the Lifetime Achievement Award, “Hard to Be a God” was again screened at Rotterdam earlier this year.

Based on a Strugatsky brothers novel of the same name, the story was already brought to screen by Pieter Fleischmann in 1989, but the Russian writing pair objected to his methods and left the project.

The brothers’ “Roadside Picnic” had previously gone on to inspire Andrey Tarkovsky (“Stalker”, 1979).

More recently “The Inhabited Island” became Russia’s most expensive sci-fi film, a 2008/09 two-parter helmed by Russian actor, director, producer, movie talkshow host — and chairman of the “Hard to Be a God” production company — Fedor Bondarchuk.

And parallels have been drawn between James Cameron’s “Avatar” and the first entry to the Strugastkys’ Noon Universe, of which “Hard to Be a God” is part.

“Hard to Be a God” is on general release in Russia today; for now, international film fans must wait on news of global distribution. — AFP-Relaxnews