Directed by Kira Muratova • 1971 • Ukraine, Soviet Union
Starring Zinaida Sharko, Oleg Vladimirsky, Yuri Kayurov
With its daring formalist freedom, Kira Muratova’s pointillist family portrait so perplexed and unnerved Soviet censors that it effectively halted her career for years afterward. A kind of psychological breakup movie, THE LONG FAREWELL traces the growing rift that develops between an emotionally impulsive single mother (stage legend Zinaida Sharko, transcendent in one of her first film roles) and her increasingly resentful teenage son (Oleg Vladimirsky), who upends her world when he announces that he wishes to live with his faraway father. The seemingly simple premise is rendered anything but by Muratova’s dreamy, drifting style, with off-kilter framing, editing, and dialogue continually pushing cinema’s aesthetic and expressive boundaries outward.
Up Next in Directed by Kira Muratova
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The Asthenic Syndrome
Directed by Kira Muratova • 1989 • Ukraine, Soviet Union
Starring Olga Antonova, Sergei Popov, Galina ZakhurdayevaWidely considered Kira Muratova’s masterpiece, THE ASTHENIC SYNDROME is also Soviet cinema’s grand avant-comic opus, a deconstructive portrait of the nation in the final, frenzied s...
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The Tuner
Directed by Kira Muratova • 2004 • Russia, Ukraine
Starring Alla Demidova, Nina Ruslanova, Renata LitvinovaAdapted from selected stories by Arkady Koshko, THE TUNER is Kira Muratova’s pitch-black con-artist comedy as well as a veritable masterclass in slow-burn unpredictability Capitalizing on ...
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Change of Fate
Directed by Kira Muratova • 1987 • Ukraine, Soviet Union
Starring Natalya Leble, Yuriy Shlykov, Vladimir KarasyovKira Muratova’s typically idiosyncratic adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s play “The Letter” unfolds in an outpost in colonial Asia where Maria (Natalya Leble, in a role most famous...
