Valentin Yezhov Movies

Sibiriada was controversial in the Soviet Union, but it received the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, the second most prestigious prize after the Palme d'Or. After making this film, director Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky moved to the West. In the story, the lives of two Siberian families lives are chronicled through three generations, beginning with the period just after the turn of the century, and carrying on through the '60s. Before the revolution, a poor boy is the same age as a girl from a rich family, who uses her family position to torment him. Meanwhile, his father has been building a "corduroy" wooden road into the forest. However, as the boy and girl grow up, they fall in love. Their union is forbidden by her family, and he is beaten by their henchmen and cast adrift at sea. During the Revolution, the girl flees her family, thinking to join her true love. Many years later, he returns to his village with his teenaged son, and discovers that the former rich girl was killed long ago. The teenaged boy, in turn, become a geological engineer, and returns to his father's village to look for oil. ~ 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