Zavtra byla voyna

I never expected to be so impressed by this picture after reading the description. I often avoid to read reviews before watching the film in order to have my own uninfluenced opinions. This movie is like a thorn which you just stepped in. It's about the freedom, of having questions, wanting to find the truth and the repercussions of these in a Stalinist regime. The alternation of black and whit with the colored picture show exactly what I was saying: the difference between liberty, happiness shreds and marginal thinking, but also the difference between a great intellect and a small-minded one. The music in the film is also great, achieving a perfect conjunction with the images and the surroundings, the society. It's also a perfect explanation of the presumption of innocence and how society arrives to judge in advance, disregarding the collateral damage.

Zavtra Byla Voyna (Tomorrow was the War). Directed by Yuriy Kara. 1987 89 minutes. 10/10 Set in Stalinist Russia in 1940 and based on a novel by Brois Vailiev. The story centers around a grade 9 class of students, but these students are older than our year 9 students, they look like year 12 students. The three main characters are girls in the class, the flirtatious Zina (Natalya Negoda), the serious Iskra (Irina Cherichenko) and the tragic Vika (Yuliya Tarkhova).

The story delves into the struggles of Iskra and Vika to reconcile their personal quest for freedom of expression and truth against the harsh backdrop of conformity to Stalin and the state as best exemplified by their teacher and Iskra's mother. Vika invites friends to her house and reads a poem from a decadent poet. An ideological conflict arises when Vika's father (Lyuberetsky) extols the virtues of freedom of expression to the girls and a few other members of the class. News of this soon reaches their teacher and Iskra's mother and he is soon denounced as an enemy of the state. The secret police come calling at midnight and he is taken away. It is never revealed who it was that denounced the father, and it doesn't even matter, as there are weighty themes the movie explores.

Worse is to come. At school the teacher denounces Vika, and demands she be expelled. She also demands that Iskra show her loyalty to the motherland, by being the one to denounce her friend. This is something Iskra refuses to do, despite mounting pressure on her in school, and from her own mother. The film is to be commended for showing the nuances involved, and the performance of Cherichenko in the key role of Iskra is nothing short of riveting, as we are left wondering from moment to moment whether she follow the examples of her mother and teacher and denounce her friends, or stand for what she believes in and follow the example of her principal, who is dismissed from his post for not toeing the party line.

There are no heavy interrogation scenes with faceless people representing the state. Images of Stalin are fleeting, his presence is felt more through association via Iskra's totalitarian mother and the demagoguery represented by her teacher, but it is always there lurking in the background. The dilemma faced by Iskra and the other students is weighty, and developed subtly, as we witness the struggle involved in the emergence of character, but it is character that emerges at a great cost and not without considerable pain along the way. A thoughtful and evocative movie with assured direction throughout and a wonderful soundtrack, it is a movie that will continue to reward with multiple viewings.

That is a wonderful movie that breaks your heart. The story takes us in the last autumn before Germany invaded USSR. A group of high school kids with their eternal business of first love, classes, leaders and dreamers is suddenly thrown out of peaceful existence. A father of the most likable girl is taken by KGB and she has to renounce him publicly. She can not betray him and so she invites all her true friends (those who did not desert her for being a daughter of the enemy of the state) for a picnic. She does not say so, but t is a farewell. After that she takes an overdose of sleeping pills. In an unbelievable twist of fate (KGB almost never released its victims) her father is released in few days. The story runs about a week, but boy, how fast this kids had to grow up. It is like the innocence of their existence was lost. One day they lived in the most perfect country, where justice and equality ruled, or so they were brought up to believe. And next they new that it all were lies and innocent people were destroyed by regime without mercy. There was also problem of loyalty. Who do you stay loyal to, your friend or your country? The movie ends with few laconic lines of information what happened to the rest of the class during the war. Somebody was burned in a tank, somebody was hanged for participation in resistance, somebody became an ace pilot. It is a great movie, see it if you have an opportunity. May be you would learn something you did not know about people from the USSR and about this period of history.

its a harsh view of the life lead in stalin's russia. The title indicates that a war was on even before Hitler invaded (it takes place in '40 before russia was invaded). 1984 in its true, real, form where people are so penetrated by the dogma around them, they are virtually willing to denounce their children and words like truth and justice are unknown. (one of the girls asks her mother, "what is istina?" which means 'higher truth') the suffering befalling the kids in the movie is tragic and heartfelt. Its excellently done and the acting is superb (in the russian style). There is a reason why it is rated higher than godfather.

The film is about the truth, but it is absolutely not about the truth of discovering the injustice of the system, since every system is unjust in one way or another and people know about it, as everybody does in this film. This film however is about the exploration of truth, the real truth, the truth of heart, the truth of being loyal to your friend and to your country no matter what, no matter how difficult the situation is, no matter how unjust is the system.