ZINA

Ken McMullen's most ambitious film to date traces the story of
one of those shadowy figures from the past through whom we
seek to learn the true temper of an extraordinary time. She is
Zina, Leon Trotsky's daughter, whose copious letters to her
father and others form the solid basis to this imaginative
interpretation of her life and Europe's troubled times between
the communist revolution in the Soviet Union and the rise of
fascism in Germany. When she is sent away from his island exile
by the deposed revolutionary leader for psychiatric treatment
in Vienna, her mental instability, born of her strange
relationship with her famous father, becomes more and more a
parallel for the madness of the times. Who could possibly say
she was mad, faced with her circumstances and the events
around her in the world? Domiziana Giordano, whose performance in Tarkovsky's NOSTALGHIA was so striking, is again a magnificent presence, while ian McKellen as the psychiatrist and Philip Madoc as Trotsky also contribute notable performances.