On December 23, 2001, director Alexander Sokurov attempted something filmmakers had called impossible: shooting an entire 96-minute feature film in a single, unbroken camera take, with no cuts and no do-overs allowed.

The film, Russian Ark, was shot inside St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace using a Steadicam operator who walked through 33 rooms, choreographing nearly 2,000 costumed actors and three live orchestras, all synchronized to the second. Two previous attempts that year had failed due to technical glitches.

There was no safety net: this was long-form digital video recorded straight to a hard drive, with barely enough storage for one full pass. If anything went wrong at minute 95, the entire production would have to reschedule and start completely over from the beginning.

The third take, filmed just before the winter light ran out, worked. Russian Ark remains the longest true single-take feature film ever made, a 96-minute sprint through 300 years of Russian history with literally zero edits.