Novocherkassk, USSR, 1962. Lyudmila is a Party executive and devout communist who had fought in WWII for Stalin's ideology. Certain that her work will create a communist society, the woman detests any anti-Soviet sentiment. During a strike at the local electromotive factory, Lyudmila witnesses a laborers' piquet gunned down under orders from the government that seeks to cover up mass labor strikes in USSR. After the bloodbath, when survivors flee from the square, Lyudmila rea... (Full plot summary below)
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Novocherkassk, USSR, 1962. Lyudmila is a Party executive and devout communist who had fought in WWII for Stalin's ideology. Certain that her work will create a communist society, the woman detests any anti-Soviet sentiment. During a strike at the local electromotive factory, Lyudmila witnesses a laborers' piquet gunned down under orders from the government that seeks to cover up mass labor strikes in USSR. After the bloodbath, when survivors flee from the square, Lyudmila realizes her daughter has disappeared. A gaping rift opens in her worldview. Despite the blockade of the city, mass arrests, and the authorities' attempts to cover up the massacre, Lyudmila searches for her daughter. We don't know how the search will end, but realize that the woman's life won't ever be the same.
Leave your thoughts about Dear Comrades!.
| San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussSetting political movies in the past is an easy, usually safe way to signal virtue. But with its eerie resonances of 2021 reports from Moscow to Washington, D.C., this monochrome aesthetic object looks like something that draws real blood. |
| Washington PostAnn HornadayIn this absorbing and rigorously disciplined account, Konchalovsky proves that a healthy embrace of nuance doesn't need to result in muddled thinking. Indeed, it can lead to something sharp, bright and dazzlingly precise. |
| The New YorkerAnthony LaneBeautiful and damning, Dear Comrades! is also an act of remembrance. |
| The GuardianPeter BradshawIt is a passionate drama of fear and rage. |
| The Film StageGlenn Heath Jr.Through its meticulous recreation of historical circumstance both personal and collective, Dear Comrades! beautifully counters these natural feelings of indifference through a blisteringly precise style of dramatic filmmaking that never shies away from revealing the fascism propping up all the propagandistic bluster. |
| VarietyJessica KiangMeticulous and majestic, epic in scope and tattoo-needle intimate in effect, this scrupulous recreation of the lead-up to and aftermath of the Novocherkassk massacre six decades ago is excoriating proof that not all filmmakers are made sloppy or slipshod by anger. Some are made ever more righteously, icily precise. |
| Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangKonchalovsky has said that he meant to recapture the look of films from the ’60s, but these crisp, high-contrast images speak to another impulse as well: to look into a past shrouded in the fog of delusion and doublespeak, and to see through it with a clarity that burns and even heals |
| Movie NationRoger MooreThe intimacy of the story and the black and white cinematography keep Dear Comrades! from crossing into “epic.” Konchalovskiy is more interested in reminding people of the violence their neighbors, soldiers, police and leaders are capable of, how drab and circumscribed life was back then. |
| IndieWireEric KohnBrimming with anger and intrigue, this fiery historical drama from a veteran Russian filmmaker revisits the tragedy with fresh immediacy, and gives it a human face. |
| The PlaylistJack KingDear Comrades!, from veteran Russian auteur Andrei Konchalovsky, is a fascinating blend of dark satire and bleak archaeology. |
