¡Queridos camaradas!

A woman who has staunchly devoted herself to building a Communist state in Russia in the 1960s is forced into a moral reckoning when the conflict between her ideology and those rebelling against it gets personal.

Yuliya Vysotskaya delivers a taut, sensational performance as Lyuda, a woman whose daughter is among those missing after a deadly riot at a factory. Suddenly, big picture ideals and abstract ambitions collapse around her and her entire life becomes laser focused on finding out whether or not her daughter is still alive. To an American audience watching this movie in 2021, it is impossible not to see our own cultural dilemma reflected, not necessarily in the specifics, but rather in the general attitudes. The Soviet Union of 1962 looks a lot like the United States now, with different factions of our country wanting completely opposite things and determined not to budge an inch.

"Dear Comrades!" has a lean spareness to it that I liked. It feels like hardly a frame is wasted, and it's all captured in striking black and white.

Grade: A-

Winner of major awards at Venice and Chicago film festivals 2020., and one of top 5 picked by the National Board of Review, USA, it is a remarkable screenplay written by the director and his co-scriptwriter Kiseleva (they have collaborated on 4 feature films, 3 of which I have seen) with the director's wife Yulia Vysostskaya playing the main role. Their works are slow paced but gather steam only as you reach the thought-provoking and stunning ends in each film. The one film that eluded me thus far of the 4 films is "Sin" (2019), a biopic on sculptor/painter Michelangelo, a copy of which was presented to the Pope by Putin. And the Pope is apparently an admirer of the director. One damning aside in the script is that Nobel Prize winner Mikhail Sholokov's "And Quiet Flows the Don" did not present the full truth of the events in the novel as one would have assumed it did. The award winning "Paradise" and "The Postman's White Nights" are the other wonderful works from the team. Reminds one of the late collaborations on the films of director Ken Loach with writer Paul Laverty, David Lean with writer Robert Bolt, and of Kieslowski with writer Piesiewicz in the evening of the respective director's careers.

The story happens in 1962, on a small Russian town during the cold war. The people of city seems to be getting angry and impatient with the central government due to wage cuts and general raise in prices. These changes cause tensions to build up rapidly between factory workers and the communist party members until explodes in a gruesome way.

The movie follows a member of the communist party called Lyudmila Danilovna (played by Yuliya Vysotskaya) that works for and represents the central government in the city. 'Lyuda' (for short) is an ideologue that believes on the party propaganda even thought she might express mild dissatisfaction privately from time to time. Her father, an ex party member, is a melancholic retired man that seems not to believe in the party lines anymore. Her daughter is a "full-of-life" Leninist factory worker, that believes that Stalin is an assassin dictator. The tension that sprouts from those different generations, personalities and occupations inside a highly unstable political regime leads the main character to restore and reinforce her personal relations(family, neighbors and friends) instead of the party propaganda.

I kept thinking of our current times and how events such as happened in Novocherkaask could happen here. In the film a wildcat strike by workers is dismissed by local party officials until it gets out of hand when the workers take control of the factory. The regional government then steps in and is also ineffectual so the army and KGB are called in which eventually leads to a massacre. Poignantly told from the perspective of of loyal party official who receives assistance from a sympathetic KGB official in trying to find her missing daughter in the midst of a town under siege. Well worth watching from both a historical and from a gripping dramatic presentation.

Gripping portrayal of the bloody downthrow of the 1962 workers' uprise in Novocherkassk, told through the eyes of a convinced Soviet member of local government whose daughter goes missing after the incident that the KGB makes a government secret and seals off the city. Beautifully shot in black and white, with unusual camera perspectives, picture compositions and orchestrated movement within the frame. Excellent performance by the main actress and very skillful directing. Moving dramaturgy, despite a seeming gap in the middle and a relatively open ending, which give room for interpretation and pondering. Very worthwhile cinema.