My Friend Ivan Lapshin (1984)

Recommended

Soviet Union

Feature Film

Original Title: Мой друг Иван Лапшин

Director: Aleksei German

Writers: Eduard Volodarsky, Yuri German

Cinematographer: Valeri Fedosov

Composer: Arkadi Gagulashvili

Cast: Andrei Boltnev, Nina Ruslanova, Andrei Mironov, Aleksei Zharkov, Zinaida Adamovich, Aleksandr Filippenko, Yuri Kuznetsov

A man remembers incidents and figures from his childhood in a provincial town in the Soviet Union of the mid-1930s, detailing the death of Marxism, as Stalin’s regime began to take its toll, in German’s beautifully photographed and disorientatingly gripping yet rather cold and decidedly depressing work, which has often been hailed as Russia’s greatest film. Iain.Stott