Lyudmila Zaytseva Movies

In this drama, a directing debut of the popular Russian actor Leonid Filatov, the actors at a Moscow repertory theater company react with ever-increasing activism to the news that their company is to be closed down by the government. One of the rep company's directors committed the cardinal sin of defecting during an international tour. At first, the members of the company simply lodge their protests with the bureaucrat who is responsible for the order of closure. When this doesn't move him, they resort to attempts to seduce him and then blackmail him. Still, he will not relent. They finally try a hunger strike. This film is based on a true story. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The title character of the Russian Little Vera is a headstrong teenage girl, played by Natalya Negoda. To the dismay of her parents, Vera lives only for the moment, making no provision for her future. She'd rather hang out at local cafes in garish makeup and provocative clothing. A chance meeting with handsome student Sergei (Andrei Sokolov) develops into a sexual relationship. Her parents send out Vera's brother (Alexander Alexeyev-Negreba) to talk some sense into her, which proves to be doubly dicey when it turns out that the brother is an old acquaintance of the rebellious Sergei. Vera lies, saying that she's gotten pregnant by Sergei, so he obligingly marries her and moves in with her family, which serves only to make matters worse, as Vera's drunken father (Yuri Nazarov) ends up stabbing his son-in-law. Persuaded to lie about the incident to keep her father out of jail, Vera takes her family's side. A last-minute tragedy is barely averted, but the audience gets the distinct feeling that Vera's problems with her family in particular and her life in general are far from over. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this drama with socio-political nuances, a heroic engineer is able to save the passengers on his train from injury or death by sacrificing his own life when his locomotive crashes. An investigator (Oleg Borisov) and Malinin, a journalist (Anatoli Solonitsin) are both involved in the story of the crash but from two different angles: the investigator wants to find out why it happened, the journalist wants to laud the heroism of the dead engineer. In the end, the investigator discovers that the responsibility for the disaster lies with a series of people, officials and others, who made significant errors that added up to a fatality. The question is in the end, whose story will see the light of day -- the investigator's or the journalist's? This was Anatoli Solonitsin's last film, as the actor died of cancer in June of 1982. He was the favorite actor of the critically-acclaimed director Andrei Tarkovsky, who had been hoping to cast Solonitsin in his next work, Nostalghia. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Based on a short story by Anton Chekhov, this drama centers around a desire for revenge and the tragedy of a star-crossed love. After a general ruins some men under him in punishment for a rebellion, a friend of the broken men vows revenge. The friend, a naval officer, takes a job as a valet in the general's son's house. While he plots his revenge, the son has an affair with a woman whom the valet begins to love. She is discarded after becoming pregnant, and the valet has his own troubles; he has contracted tuberculosis. Sick and unable to follow through on his plans for vengeance, he leaves for France with the pregnant woman hoping to declare his love and seek a cure for his illness. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi