Dear Comrades Movie Review
Director: Andrei Konchalovsky
Cast: Julia Vysotskaya, Andrei Guseve, Yulia Burova, Sergei Erlish, Vlaislav Komarov
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 1/28/21
Opens: January 29, 2021 in virtual cinema. February 5, 2021 streaming
Not only political candidates, but whole countries embarking on a new system of government promise the world in poetry and then govern in prose. In the U.S., a middle-class revolution beginning in 1776 seemed to guarantee that our nation would be the shining city on the hill, but slavery, the Civil War, and countless brutal and unnecessary wars of our various administrations in Washington belie those ideals. So it was with the Soviet Union.
International Film Festival of Rotterdam: In Dear Comrades!, Andrei Konchalovsky’s record of the Novocherkassk massacre What is the real “truth” behind the Novocherkassk massacre? Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky s latest film premiering at International Film Festival of Rotterdam explores this in detail. Baradwaj Rangan February 06, 2021 13:41:28 IST
Andrei Konchalovsky has had one of the odder careers in world cinema. He began by writing a couple of Tarkovsky classics (Ivan’s
Childhood,
Andrei Rublev) in the 1960s. By the 1980s, he was in Hollywood, making mainstream fare like
Tango & Cash, starring (gulp!) Sylvester Stallone. (You have to admit that’s some leap!) And now, in his 80s, he’s back to his roots in black-and-white Russian cinema. His latest film,
15 Top Contenders for the Best International Feature Film Oscar Shortlist IndieWire 1/25/2021
Over the last five years, the Academy has made it increasingly easier for more voters to participate in the phase-one Best International Feature Film Oscar nominating committee, never more than during this pandemic year, when online viewing made it possible for all members to watch the movies, as long as they notched the minimum number of 12 assigned features.
With Oscar deadlines pushed back by two months, the Academy rules required that countries submit motion pictures that were released theatrically between October 1, 2019 and December 31, 2020. This year’s expanded shortlist of 15 (just like the documentary branch) will be revealed on February 9, 2021, with no executive committee saves, due to the pandemic.
Veteran Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky has gone back to his beginnings for his latest film.
Veteran Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky has gone back to his beginnings for his latest film. The real-life events on which
Dear Comrades! is based took place in June 1962, when social unrest over rising prices saw strikes break out in Novocherkassk, an industrial town in Russia’s south, culminating in street protest against the Soviet regime. The very idea of such an uprising was, of course, anathema in the “workers’ paradise” that was the communist system, and it was brutally suppressed by the Kremlin. The extent of the casualties was concealed, the dead secretly buried, and the events practically written out of history for almost four decades.