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A Soviet official finds her loyalty to the regime tested when her daughter goes missing in the aftermath of a massacre.
In an out-of-the-way city in Nikita Khrushchev’s USSR, anger at rising food prices and increasing demands on workers is on the verge of spilling over into a strike. Initially advocating for a harsh response to the protesters, a local Communist Party official soon realises that her teenage daughter has been caught up in the violent crackdown and embarks on a clandestine search. But her mission is obstructed by a ruthless bureaucratic system in which witnesses are sworn to silence and inconvenient facts must be suppressed and forgotten.
This aesthetically stunning historical drama, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, draws on the true story of the long-denied 1962 Novocherkassk massacre. Expertly helmed by one-time Andrei Tarkovsky collaborator and revered auteur Andrei Konchalovsky (The Postman’s White Nights, MIFF 2015), Dear Comrades! is a moving, quietly satirical examination of the ruthlessness of unrestrained power and the limits of ideological commitment.
“Meticulous and majestic, epic in scope and tattoo-needle intimate in effect … [Dear Comrades!] is excoriating proof that not all filmmakers are made sloppy or slipshod by anger.” – Variety