Dear Comrades!

Dear Comrades! (Дорогие товарищи!, 2020) is Andrei Konchalovsky's black-and-white historical drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. The film digs up an episode the Soviet state buried for decades: the day soldiers opened fire on striking workers in the town of Novocherkassk. We see it through Lyudmila, a loyal city-committee official who still believes the Party can do no wrong.

Food prices jump, the locomotive plant walks out, and the anger spills into the square. Lyudmila wants the ringleaders punished hard. Then live rounds tear through the crowd, and her teenage daughter vanishes in the chaos. From there she searches morgues and checkpoints across a sealed-off city, and every locked door chips away at the faith she built her whole life on. Yulia Vysotskaya plays her with almost no tears, just clenched, private dread.

Konchalovsky frames the 1962 killings as one woman's private wound rather than a history lecture. The film took the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and was Russia's pick for the Oscars. It hits hardest for anyone who assumes loyalty to a cause and love for a child will never collide head-on. Stream Dear Comrades! (2020) online on iFILM.