Dear Comrades

A gripping and angry recollection of a dark moment in USSR history, when the KGB responded to a 1962 factory strike by opening fire on the demonstrators. It then ensured the crime disappeared from the official record by closing down the town and going to work on its populace. Director (and co-writer) Andrey Konchalovskiy was a young man at the time and his wife, Yuliya Vysotskaya, is from Novocherkassk, the town where it happened. She's also the film's star, playing a local Communist Party wonk and true believer unable to admit to herself what she has just witnessed even as the events resonate ever closer to home. As ideological purity clashes with messy reality, Konchalovskiy, once a collaborator with fellow Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky, situates us back in the early 1960s with exquisitely composed and pin-sharp monochrome visuals (by director of photography Andrey Naydenov). They're often reminiscent of Dr Strangelove - another story of ideology rampant. A festival favourite all over the world, Dear Comrades is an impressively ambitious work that also manages considerable finesse and nuance.