Soviet cinema's most stylish revolutionary thriller nobody talks about.
The film is dedicated to Dzerzhinsky's closest associate, the revolutionary Yakov Peters. The film tells about the events related to the uprising of the Socialist Revolutionaries in Moscow in 1918 and the activities of Boris Savinkov's underground.
Direction
Tarasov shoots 1918 Moscow like a noir fever dream.
Acting
Kozakov's Savinkov—charm, menace, and doomed romanticism.
Cinematography
Shadows that move like another character.
Director
Sergei Tarasov
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Latvian actor Girts Jakovlevs learned Russian phonetically for the role; his accent became part of the film's eerie otherness.
Made during Brezhnev's stagnation, the film's urgent pacing was read by dissident audiences as coded commentary on their own frozen present.
SU
