A doomed poet races through snowy Leningrad while his lover waits at the border — history's most tragic almost-escape.
In December of 1925, renowned American dancer Isadora Duncan arrives at the Soviet-Latvian border, where she makes arrangements for her lover Yesenin to flee from the USSR. All he has to do is get on the train to Riga. The poet secretly travels from Moscow to snowy Leningrad, where he gets caught up in a crazy whirlwind of events. While trying to evade surveillance by secret services, he has a series of fateful encounters. He finds both solace and despair in the city’s criminal underground. Despite the many obstacles he faces along the way, he remains determined to reunite with Isadora.
Cinematography
Leningrad as suffocating snow globe of dread.
Acting
Petrov captures Esenin's self-destructive charisma perfectly.
Director
Klim Shipenko
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Esenin was Russia's most scandalous poet — his 1925 suicide in a Leningrad hotel made him a martyr, though historians still debate whether it was truly by his own hand.
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