The Presidential Library introduced film about Pierre Gilliard - teacher, friend and chronicler of Nicholas II and his family

On April 24, 2019 the Presidential Library’s Cinema Club meeting introduced documentary film “The Return of Pierre Gilliard” (2018), written and directed by Lyudmila Schacht and Konstantin Kozlov, “NATAKAM ”Film Studio”.

According to documentary director Lyudmila Schacht, the epoch through the fate of a specific person, and even a foreigner is a worthy artistic task, in the center of which is the diary of the teacher of the children of the last Russian emperor and documents provided by his relatives. According to the director, the film group received financial assistance from the Honorary Consulate of Switzerland in St. Petersburg.

The film tells about Pierre Gilliard (1879-1962), a citizen of the Swiss Republic, invited to Russia to teach the children of the monarch of the world's greatest empire, where he was destined to become the only surviving witness to the tragic fate of Nicholas II and his family. Crowned parents were extremely concerned about the upbringing and education of their children; Pierre Gilliard, a French teacher, was selected from among the best students at the University of Geneva and, upon his arrival in Russia, first gave lessons to the Romanov daughters. But the main thing was waiting ahead: he had to go through a difficult path of rapprochement with the eight-year-old Tsarevich Alexei, suffering from an incurable disease that deprives him of his usual childhood joys - hemophilia. As you know, this disease is inherited through the female line, but passed only to men. “Then for the first time I realized the torture of a mother suffering from the thought that it was she who gave her son a disease with which science cannot do anything”, - this voice recording in Pierre Gilliard’s diary is spoken offscreen.  

The film explores the development of the relationship between a child and his wise mentor. In the letters to his homeland, Pierre described “deaf hostility turning into open opposition” on the part of Alexei. The boy no longer believed that someone or something could help him, but the “Frenchman” did not force the events, but tried to gradually lift at least some of the restrictions that caring parents put on the Tsarevich. As a result, Alyosha was allowed to swim, tumble in the snow, play with the boatswain's children... And gradually the mentor and his student became friends. “I discovered a child with a heart”, - Gilliard now wrote to Switzerland.

Grand-nephews, writer Pierre-Frederic Gilliard and doctor Jacques Moser, tell about Pierre Gilliard and his fate on the screen. The film is based both on the memories of the teacher of the imperial children, and on the frames of the chronicles and photographs. Speaking of the latter: 30 unique pictures on display in the film, reflecting the life, the atmosphere and the relationships that developed in the royal family, were made by Gilliard himself - he acquired a camera for his salary. The proximity of the guest mentor and the imperial family became so close that Pierre Gilliard was taken on all trips, including visits to the papa in Mogilev's headquarters.   

Then followed the forced, under gross pressure of generals, the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II. The interim government, having placed the Romanov family in custody at the Alexander Palace, decided to transport them to Tobolsk. Gilliard was one of those who voluntarily went for the family of Nicholas II to Siberia. Then he moved with royal children to Yekaterinburg, but he was not allowed into the Ipatiev House by the Bolsheviks and returned back to Tobolsk. In 1920, through Vladivostok, together with Alexandra Tegleva, who served in the Alexander Palace as the “senior room girl”, emigrated to Europe. He managed to take out his archive - diaries, letters, memorable relics, photographs: they formed the basis of the documentary film The Return of Pierre Gilliard.

He arrived in Russia in 1904, at the beginning of the revolutionary events, and left it in 1920, saving the memory of the people dear to him from the flames of the Civil War and the investigation into their death, for which he spent three years in Siberia. After returning from Russia to Switzerland, he wrote and published the book The Tragic Family of Nicholas II and His Family. Later it was reissued under the title "13 years at the court of the Romanovs".

At the end of the film, it is reported that the Ebdo magazine included Pierre Gilliard in the publication “100 Famous Swiss”.