Production notes

According to director Aleksei Balabanov, the concept of Brother was born from his old idea to make a film about bandits and musicians, since he was close to both. Music was to play a prominent role in this concept. Looking for a suitable soundtrack, Balabanov chose the band Nautilus Pompilius, since he had been friends with the vocalist Vyacheslav Butusov since his time in Sverdlovsk. Other musicians invited to filming included the band Aquarium and vocalists Nastya Poleva and Sergey Chigrakov (the latter from the band Chizh & Co). There are some elements of the draft that are different from the film, such as:

Sveta and her husband Pavel are into sadomasochism. During filming, Balabanov rewrote these scenes to instead feature domestic violence, but later explored the theme of BDSM in his next film, Of Freaks and Men. The criminal showdown and the house concert took place in the same apartment. Director Stepan was not a random hostage, but the organizer of the house concert. The target was a rock producer who imposed a tribute on musicians for the opportunity to perform on television. Realizing that Viktor set him up with this showdown and that the bandits wanted to shoot not only the producer, but also all the musicians gathered in the apartment, Danila kills his accomplices right in the next room. Krugly does not say proverbs. Some characters are missing, such as Kat, the Caucasians who did not pay for the tram fare, and various minor characters. Danila makes a bulletproof vest from CDs sewn together.

The film was shot in thirty-one days. According to producer Sergei Selyanov, the film cost about 10,000 US dollars to shoot. Many actors worked for a nominal fee or for free. According to Svetlana Pismichenko, who played Sveta, she was paid a thousand dollars for her role. During filming, she wore her own clothes that she also wore to the audition. She was trained to drive a tram specifically for the role. The large-knit sweater worn by Danila was bought by the artist Nadezhda Vasilyeva at a flea market for forty rubles. In the last scene, the truck driver who picked up Danila was played by the film's cameraman Sergei Astakhov; by the end of filming, Balabanov had not found an actor who could drive a truck, and the stuntmen did not suit him. The Nautilus Pompilius that Sveta and Danila attend was actually a concert of the band Chizh & Co. According to Pismichenko, drunken fans at the concert almost trampled over her and Bodrov in the crowd.

Brother has an approval rating of 100% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 5 reviews, and an average rating of 7.63/10.

In 2016, producer Sergei Selyanov noted that in the 2000s and 2010s, there was no character in Russian cinema who had as strong an image as Danila Bagrov. In the 2018 music video for her song "90", the Russian singer-songwriter Monetochka reenacts scenes from Brother.