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Russia · 2020
2h 0m
Director Andrei Konchalovsky
Starring Yuliya Vysotskaya, Vladislav Komarov, Andrei Gusev, Yulia Burova
Genre Drama, History
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Lyudmilla is a former soldier for the Red Army in WWII and currently working for the Communist party in 1962. During a strike at the Novocherkassk Electric Locomotive Plant, she witnesses the workers gunned down under orders from the government to keep labor unrest quiet. After her daughter disappears in the chaos, Lyudmilla’s worldview severely shifts while searching for her.
The Hollywood Reporter by Deborah Young
Although at first sight this dramatization of a 1962 strike at a factory in the U.S.S.R. may seem a long way from the interests of contemporary audiences, it is surprising how much resonance the film has with the political struggles of our own time.
Brimming with anger and intrigue, this fiery historical drama from a veteran Russian filmmaker revisits the tragedy with fresh immediacy, and gives it a human face.
The Film Stage by Glenn Heath Jr.
Through its meticulous recreation of historical circumstance both personal and collective, Dear Comrades! beautifully counters these natural feelings of indifference through a blisteringly precise style of dramatic filmmaking that never shies away from revealing the fascism propping up all the propagandistic bluster.
Dear Comrades is a fascinating, irony-steeped portrait of a soul who’s been hardened by her trauma, to the extent that she embraces its architects.
Dear Comrades!, from veteran Russian auteur Andrei Konchalovsky, is a fascinating blend of dark satire and bleak archaeology.
It’s in its depiction of the communist party’s response to a peaceful demonstration that Andrei Konchalovsky’s latest is at its most effective.
Meticulous and majestic, epic in scope and tattoo-needle intimate in effect, this scrupulous recreation of the lead-up to and aftermath of the Novocherkassk massacre six decades ago is excoriating proof that not all filmmakers are made sloppy or slipshod by anger. Some are made ever more righteously, icily precise.
Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney
The film’s magnetic centre is a strong performance from Vysotskaya, working from a base line of initial testiness to rising anxiety and terror in face of the oppression that she realises she has been enabling.
The Film Stage by Matt Cipolla
Dear Comrades! is—to throw an overused word around—timely, but largely in how it observes the conflict between communism and socialism and how modern audiences confuse the two.
It’s a film that understands that humour and horror are not always mutually exclusive and that even the worst moments in life carry an air of the absurd.
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