Oleg Menshikov Movies

Russian actor and filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov returns as Gen. Sergei Kotov in this sequel to his Academy Award-winning international success Utomlyonnye Solntsem (aka Burnt By The Sun). In 1941, Kotov is being held in a prison camp as war looms, and when the camp is attacked as Germany launches a campaign against Russia, he manages to escape in the confusion. While Kotov believes his wife Marusia (Victoria Tolstoganova) and daughter Nadya (Nadezhda Mikhalkova) lost their lives in Stalin's purges, in truth they're still alive and living with Arsentyev (Oleg Menshikov), who has taken Marusia as his wife. Certain he has no family left, Kotov joins a battalion of volunteers and fights fearlessly against the Germans, oblivious to the carnage around him. Nadya, however, has learned that her father is alive and at large; joining the army as a nurse, she sets out to find Kotov, with danger lurking at every turn. Utomlyonnye Solntsem 2: Predstoyanie (aka The Exodus: Burnt By The Sun 2) was an official selection at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

French director Regis Wargnier's fifth feature film is a romantic period drama which is also a tribute to the victims of a tragic Stalinist episode. In June 1946, Stalin launched a major propaganda campaign aimed at Russians who had settled in the West, offering them amnesty and an opportunity to be involved in the postwar restructuring of the USSR. Many people who believed Stalin and returned home were executed, interned, or subjected to repression. The protagonist of Est-Ouest, Alexei Golovin (Oleg Menshikov), takes his young French wife Marie (Sandrine Bonnaire) and son Serioja with him on the long journey back to his native land that he has missed so much. On the board of the steamship taking them to Odessa, people like them celebrate the new life that they anticipate. However, reality strikes when they reach shore. Many people are immediately executed or sent to work camps. Alexei is spared to use his skill as an accomplished doctor. He is sent to Kiev to work in a dispensary and live in a communal apartment. Alexei accepts his fate but Marie dreams of escaping to freedom. Opportunity comes her way when she meets Gabrielle Develay (Catherine Deneuve), a famous French actress on tour, passing through Kiev. Tension mounts as the relationship of Alexei and Marie is put to test. For the script of this co-production between France and Russia, Wargnier had three other collaborators: Louis Gardel, who had previously collaborated with Wargnier on Indochine; Sergei Bodrov, a well-known Russian filmmaker best-known for his award winning S.E.R. and The Prisoner of the Mountains; and Azeri scriptwriter Rustam Ibragimbekov, best remembered for his scripts of Nikita Mikhalkov films. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Rovi

A family finds itself torn between loyalty to their brother and fear of their domineering mother in this drama from Russia. Four brothers living in different parts of Russia all receive messages asking them to come home to Moscow as soon as possible. A miner in the Ukraine, a sharpshooter with the Army in Tajikistan, a hustler living in Vladivostock, and a jobless man with a string of illegitimate children living in the tundra, the siblings have an unhappy history. As children, their mother organized the family into a music group called "The Happy Family"; they enjoyed brief success, but their fortunes soon faded. In time, Mother (Nonna Mordukova) attempted to hijack a jet to the United States; after a violent altercation with the police, the entire family ended up behind bars, and Father was killed by police (while his sons looked on) when he tried to bribe his way out of the prison camp. A fifth brother, Lenchik (Oleg Menshikov), was wounded while behind bars, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down, and he's currently confined to a mental institution. Mother has now gathered her other sons together, hoping that as a group they can rescue Lenchik from the institution. Screenwriter Arif Aliev loosely based this story on actual events. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Stalinist Russia, circa 1930, is recreated in this Russian-French film that focuses on a small, elite gathering of family and friends who appreciate the idealism of Stalin's visions because they do not have to experience its darker side of gulags and purges. The story focuses upon a single day in Soviet revolutionary hero Serguei Kotov's life. Kotov lives an idyllic country life with his lovely wife Maroussia, and their feisty daughter Nadia. He is highly respected by the locals. On this day, the Kotovs are visited by the roguishly handsome Dimitri, who was a former lover of Maroussia. Dimitri is on a dark mission that may have profound effects on Kotov's peaceful, happy, and idealistic existence. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In a series of vignettes, Moscow of the 1950s comes back to life as Konstantin (Mikhail Kozakov, also the director) reminisces as he stands by the Pokrov Gate, thinking about the house he used to live in and his neighbors and friends (the young Konstantin is played by Oleg Menshikov). The post-Stalinist thaw has set in and Moscow had a special aura of relaxation and warmth, as this film illustrates. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi