2020s drama film historical drama historical film

Dear Comrades!

¡Queridos camaradas!

2020 · Russia · 120 min

Director: Andrei Konchalovsky
Screenplay: Andrei Konchalovsky
Producer: Andrei Konchalovsky, Alisher Usmanov
Cinematography: Andrey Naydyonov

Awards: Meeting Point Europe Award · 1 nominations

What the critics say

95 % Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews

Cast

Pjotr Olev

Julia Vysotskaya

Andrey Gusev

Dmitriy Koshelev

Oleg Tsvetanovich

Georgy Pipinashvili

Roman Kalkaev

Sergei Erlish

Yuliya Burova

Vladislav Komarov

What it is about

In 1962, in the Soviet town of Novocherkassk, a strike by workers at the electric locomotive plant over rising food prices and wage cuts ends in gunfire against demonstrators. Lyudmila, a party official in the local city committee and a staunch communist, witnesses the repression ordered by a government commission that is trying to keep the events hidden from the rest of the USSR. When her daughter Svetka vanishes during the protest, Lyudmila searches for her frantically yet discreetly, while the KGB arrests suspects, buries bodies in secret and forces the townspeople into silence. Caught between personal anguish and loyalty to a system that has failed her, she struggles to understand what has happened.

How it was made

The film was produced, co-written and directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, with Alisher Usmanov also credited as producer. Andrey Naydenov handled the cinematography, and the shoot combined exteriors in Novocherkassk with large sets built in Moscow. Julia Vysotskaya leads the cast as Lyudmila, alongside Yuliya Burova, Sergei Erlish, Vladislav Komarov and Andrey Gusev. As a historical drama, it reconstructs a 1962 massacre that Soviet authorities kept concealed for decades, building rising tension and taking a critical view of the regime.

Reception and legacy

The film competed at the 77th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize. It earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Film Not in the English Language and was chosen as Russia's entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 93rd Academy Awards, making the shortlist of fifteen films without a final nomination. Critics responded very positively: Rotten Tomatoes lists a 95% approval rating, and Metacritic gave it a weighted average of 82 out of 100. Some commentators, however, have questioned whether its portrait of the Soviet past ends up working as an indirect tribute to Stalinism.