Your dad gets arrested, your life implodes, and somehow you still believe in people? Soviet optimism hits different.
Screen adaptation of the novel by Yuri Bondarev. The demobilized Sergei Vokhmintsev returns to Moscow and enters the institute. Suddenly, according to the neighbor’s slanderous denunciation, his father is arrested — and Sergei, as the son of an “enemy of the people," is expelled from the party and institute. The guy goes to Kazakhstan, works at a construction site. He has many loyal friends and believes in justice...
Acting
Konyaev's silent suffering could power a small city
Cinematography
Bleak Moscow grays vs. vast Kazakh horizons
Director
Vladimir Basov
Vitaliy Konyaev
Sergei
Georgiy Martynyuk
Konstantin
Larisa Luzhina
Nina
Natalya Velichko
Asya
Vladimir Yemelyanov
Nikolai Grigoryevich
Nikolai Volkov St.
Mukomolov
Liliya Gritsenko
Mukomolova
Sergei Plotnikov
Morozov
Georgi Zhzhyonov
Gnezdilov
Vladimir Zemlyanikin
Kosov
Vsevolod Safonov
Sviridov
Mikhail Ulyanov
Bykov
Lidiya Smirnova
Bykova
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Released during Khrushchev's Thaw, this was one of the first Soviet films to explicitly depict the purges' human cost—basically state-sanctioned trauma processing.
The original novel was controversial for suggesting 'enemies of the people' had innocent families; Basov fought censors to keep Sergei's refusal to renounce his father.
SU
