My Friend Ivan Lapshin
The Most Important Art: a late Soviet cinema playlist from Ian Christie
•
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
Up Next in The Most Important Art: a late Soviet cinema playlist from Ian Christie
-
Little Vera
Directed by Vasili Pichul • 1988 • USSR/Russia
A scandal upon release, this hugely influential eighties cult film captures the anguished cynicism of the “last Soviet generation”. Vera (the name means “faith” in Russian, hence the pun of the title) is a teenager in a provincial port town whose da...
-
Repentance
Directed by Tengiz Abuladze • 1987 • USSR/Georgia
Tengiz Abuladze’s black comic allegory – the first instance of a Soviet filmmaker directly confronting the legacy of Stalin’s purges – caused a sensation when it first aired on Georgian television. Unfolding over two timelines, the film combines ...
-
Is It Easy to be Young?
Directed by Juris Podnieks • 1986 • USSR/Latvia
Hailed as “the first bird of perestroika” by Mikhail Gorbachev, Juris Podnieks’ cult classic documentary is a vital document of a society on the brink of change. Podnieks shoots with compassion and anger, giving voice to a generation coming of age ...
