Leonid Dyachkov Movies

In this officially recognized film, which won the State Prize of the Soviet Union, the inadequacies of the Soviet system are to a certain degree acknowledged. This alone provoked some interest in the film at the time of its release, in 1975. Based on the very popular and prize-winning play by Aleksandr Gelman, it tells the story of a group of factory workers, led by Potapov, (Yevgeny Leonov ) who uncharacteristically refuse to accept a pay bonus because it is clearly in error. They know this because the entire factory has consistently been run in a slipshod manner. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Director Larissa Shepitko, best known for her film The Ascent, was one of the more prominent young filmmakers in the USSR in the '70s. She died in her early 40s before she could make many films. In Ty I Ya, or You and Me, she explores the use of new storytelling techniques to recount a surgeon's crisis of conscience. Piotr (Leonid Dyachkov) cannot reconcile his personal needs with his professional work; he serves as a surgeon attached to foreign embassies. After spending a period of time wandering in the wilds of Siberia, some of it with a lovely young woman, he returns to his family and his work. One lighthearted highlight of this serious film has Piotr playing a game of cowboys and Indians with a suitably dressed friend. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The director of this film, Larisa Shepitko, was the wife of the distinguished director Elem Klimov and a very promising director herself. Based on a true story, Krylya tells of the efforts of a famous female fighter pilot from the World War II era to make a life for herself in the postwar era. At 42, the present pales before her memories of the past, and of her true love, now long dead. She is unable to come to terms with her past nor with the present, in which she is the director of a high school and the mother of an adoptive daughter. Her attempts to compensate for her distraction all lie in the direction of appearing authoritative, but the students and her daughter, with the unerring instincts of the young, distrust and despise her. In her distress, she is forced even more deeply into reliving her memories of the only time in which she was truly alive, seeking some kind of answer or resolution. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi