A provincial town in the south of the USSR, 1962. Lyudmila, a devout Communist Party official and idealistic veteran of WW II, is a scourge of anything she perceives as anti-Soviet sentiment. Together with other local party officials, she is taken by surprise by a strike at the local factory, in which her own daughter is taking part. As the situation quickly spirals out of control, Lyudmila begins a desperate search for her daughter in the face of curfews, mass arrests, and the authorities’ ruthless attempts to cover up the state violence. Her once unquestioning faith in the party line is shaken by her growing awareness of its human toll, tearing apart the world she thought she knew.

The process of making films about the 1960s is increasingly becoming the process of restoring the historical authenticity of the era, a fairly difficult task all in itself. Recently, we’ve all been seeing plenty of films where the 60s, 70s and 80s of the 20th century look fake and contrived, without any resemblance to the Soviet films made at the time, like THE CRANES ARE FLYING or BALLAD OF A SOLDIER. So, my goal was to scrupulously and in great detail reproduce the era of the USSR’s 1960s. I think that the Soviet people of post-war time, the ones who fought in WWII until victory, deserve to have a movie that pays tribute to their purity and the tragic dissonance that followed the realisation of how different the communist ideals were from the reality around them.

Screenwriter, producer, and director Andrei Konchalovsky was born in Moscow on 20 August 1937. In 1962, his very first short film won a prize at the Venice Film Festival. In the span of his career, Mr. Konchalovsky received numerous international awards for his television productions, theatre shows, and feature films: the latter getting prize nods in Cannes, San Sebastian, and Venice.

FILMOGRAPHY:
2020 - DEAR COMRADES!
2019 - SIN
2016 - PARADISE
2014 - BATTLE FOR UKRAINE
2014 - THE POSTMAN’S WHITE NIGHTS
2010 - THE NUTCRACKER IN 3D
2007 - DANS LE NOIR (Episode for “Chacun son cinéma”)
2007 - GLOSS
2003 - THE LION IN WINTER
2002 - HOUSE OF FOOLS
1997 - THE ODYSSEY
1995 - LUMIÈRE AND COMPANY
1994 - ASSIA AND THE HEN WITH THE GOLDEN EGGS
1991 - INNER CIRCLE
1991 - SAME / LAMBORGHINI COMMERCIAL
1989 - HOMMER & EDDIE
1989 - TANGO & CASH
1987 - SHY PEOPLE
1986 - DUET FOR ONE
1985 - RUNAWAY TRAIN
1984 - MARIA'S LOVERS
1982 - SPLIT CHERRY TREE
1978 - SIBERIADE
1974 - ROMANCE FOR LOVERS
1970 - UNCLE VANYA
1969 - A NEST OF GENTRY
1967 - THE STORY OF ASYA KLYACHINA
1965 - THE FIRST TEACHER
1961- THE BOY AND THE DOVE