Stalin's reign of terror in Russia during the first half of the 20th century. Described using a combination of historical settings, biographies and masterpieces from Russian avant-garde artists, composers and writers from this totalitarianism period.
When asked in an interview whether he ever intended to return to his Motherland, Joseph Brodsky replied: “Such a journey could only take place anonymously...”. The creators of this film imagined that the journey in question was undertaken after all, selecting the genre of an ironic fairytale. The poet sails to the country of his childhood, and with him we traverse not only geographical expanses, but travel through time as well; stringing together a number of facts from the Nobel Prize Laureate's biography, we return to the USSR of the 50s and early 60s, soaking up the atmosphere of the “European” city of Petersburg, to this day Russia's cultural center. Along with live-action sequences, the film features animation, as well as documentary footage concerning Brodsky and his milieu.
– World premiere at Rotterdam IFF, 2009 (program “Spectrum”);
– Grand-Prix and Prize of the Russian Guild of Film Critics “White Elephant” at the IFF “Zerkalo”, 2009;
– Main East of the West Award at the IFF in Karlovy Vary, 2009.
Cast: Grigoriy Dityatkovskiy, Alisa Freyndlih, Sergei Yursky, Artem Smola, Evgeniy Ogandzhanyan
Directed by: Andrei Khrzhanovsky
Script: Yuri Arabov, Andrei Khrzhanovsky
Producer: Andrei Khrzhanovsky, Artem Vassiliev