During the troubled shooting that started in Tajikistan in 1990 one of the team members, Nikita Matrosov, was killed by Tajik ultra-nationalists following the 1990 Dushanbe riots.

[2] After the turn of the century Vladimir Bortko realized two of the biggest projects in the history of Russian cinema for the television channel Telekanal Rossiya.

The first was an adaptation of the novel The Idiot written by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky into a television series of 10 episodes in 2002.

In 2009, Bortko caused another big controversy, with his film adaptation of the historical novel Taras Bulba written by the Russian author Nikolai Gogol.

[citation needed] In March 2014 he signed a letter in support of the position of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin on Russian annexation of Crimea.