Directed by Konstantin Lopushansky • 1986 • USSR/Russia

Arriving just months after the Chernobyl disaster, Konstantin Lopushansky’s post-apocalyptic prophecy is one of the final masterpieces of Soviet cinema. In a world devastated by nuclear war, a small community of survivors ekes out a life under the ruins of a museum. Among them is Nobel Laureate Professor Larsen (Rolan Bykov), who maintains his sanity while tending to his dying wife by writing endless letters to his missing son. In bleakly beautiful sequences that recall his apprenticeship under Tarkovsky, Lopushansky pits Larsen’s hope for salvation against humanity’s self-inflicted ruin. Co-written by Soviet sci-fi great Boris Strugatsky, Dead Man’s Letters is a haunting reflection of Cold War paranoia about the future of civilisation.

DEAD MAN’S LETTERS • ПИСЬМА МЕРТВОГО ЧЕЛОВЕКА
Directed by Konstantin Lopushansky
Written by Konstantin Lopushansky, Vyacheslav Rybakov, Boris Strugatsky
Cinematography by Nikolai Pokoptsev
Music by Aleksandr Zhurbin
Starring: Rolan Bykov, Vatslav Dvorzhetsky, Vera Mayorova

In Russian with English subtitles