Last modified on Sun 17 Jan 2021 04.48 EST
Veteran film-maker, screenwriter, theatre and TV director Andrei Konchalovskyâs career is nothing if not eclectic. He co-wrote Tarkovskyâs 1966 classic
Andrei Rublev, while his directorial CV ranges from an acclaimed 1970 adaptation of Chekhovâs
Uncle Vanya to Venice prize winners
The Postmanâs White Nights and
Paradise,
Runaway Train
Tango & Cash, from which he was removed mid-shoot.
Konchalovskyâs latest (once again feted at Venice) is among his finest work, a harrowing drama set in 1962, in the provincial USSR town of Novocherkassk. Julia Vysotskaya plays Lyudmila (AKA Lyuda), a stalwart party official who served as a battlefield nurse during the second world war, and who retains a nostalgic devotion to Stalinist ideals in the age of Khrushchev. âWhat am I supposed to believe in if