Liniya Marty

Following a recent divorce, and still with a broken heart and nerves on edge, Olga and her hypersensitive teenager daughter Natasha move into an old flat in central St. Petersburg. While renovating the flat they find a message on a wall from a boy to a girl he loved, Marta, from 1942, from the time of the siege of Leningrad. Olga and Natasha set out to find Marta together and in this adventure they are accompanied by Maksim, a successful entrepreneur who is soon taken by Olga while having doubts about his own marriage. The search starts by trying to locate all the surviving women in St. Petersburg called Marta. The search for Marta turns into a journey of personal discovery for all those involved.

A patriotic, largely feel-good series. A brave attempt to revisit in 2014 the siege or blockade of Leningrad, seen with modern eyes, including those of a child who at first, and understandably, is not interested in it. In this, the series clearly succeeds.

However, I find a few weaknesses in this series. The flashbacks to 1942 mostly do not work, they seem too staged. Some of the dialogues are quite good, while others seem contrived, and some of the playing lacking in spontaneity. This results in a somewhat disjointed, often predictable narrative, with varying artistic value.

I was most impressed by the acting of the secondary characters, for the most part very well- known actors. Some of their acting is quite moving, and rings more true than other parts of the film, perhaps because their stories, which sit quite naturally in the film, are partly autobiographical, i.e. people who lived through WWII and went through similar experiences as the ones they retell.

Well worth watching.