My Friend Ivan Lapshin
Adventures in Eastern Europe: a cult cinema playlist from Dan Bird
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1h 34m
Directed by Aleksei German • 1984 • USSR/Russia
Russian auteur Aleksei German’s masterpiece journeys into the past, as an elderly man reflects on his childhood in a communal apartment in a mid-thirties provincial town. As a nine-year-old boy, he is witness to the lives of those around him – chief among them the detective, Ivan Lapshin. Lapshin’s hunt for a ruthless criminal gang is juxtaposed with his romantic frustrations and the lives of the increasingly desperate townsfolk around him. The first flowering of German’s signature style, with its wandering camera and abundance of rich period detail, Ivan Lapshin was voted the greatest Russian film ever made by cinema professionals in 2011.
MY FRIEND IVAN LAPSHIN • МОЙ ДРУГ ИВАН ЛАПШИН
Directed by Aleksei German
Written by Eduard Volodarsky
From the novel by Yuri German
Cinematography by Valeri Fedosov
Music by Arkadi Gagulashvili
Starring: Andrei Boltnev, Nina Ruslanova, Andrei Mironov
In Russian with English subtitles
Winner of the Bronze Leopard Award and FIPRESCI Prize at Locarno International Film Festival, 1986
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