STARFFIN

Genre: documentary

Script: Andrey Klimov, Chavdar Georgiev
Status: production
Producer: Mikhail Birukov, Yury Krestinsky, Andrey Klimov
Director: Chavdar Georgiev

Review: An amazing life story of Victor Starukhin from Nizhniy Tagil will eclipse any Hollywood script.

Having gone through the hell of the Civil war and survived in Chinese refugee camp he ended up in prewar Japan where overcoming pain, humiliation and despair Victor had made the impossible: he was honored as a Japanese national hero. As a member of Japanese first national team he won great victories over the stars of American baseball and became an idol for Japanese youth but he had never received Japanese citizenship. 

The scale of Victor’s personality was so important that during baseball prohibition period in 1944 the fate of this six-foot blue-eyed Russian giant was decided on the level of prime minister.  Having survived American bomb attack and Japanese concentration camp, a deadly disease and  a loss of his family, Starukhin found the strength to return to sport and he was the first sportsman in the history of Japanese baseball to win 300 victories. He was the first and the only “European” who was inducted in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.