Little Vera

Little Vera (1988), directed by Vasily Pichul, is a Soviet drama you can watch online on iFILM. Natalia Negoda plays Vera, a teenager stranded in a grimy port town during the final years of the Soviet era — no plans, no prospects, just nights out and loud arguments at home.

When Vera falls for a university student named Sergei (Andrei Sokolov), things move fast and nowhere clean. He grew up in a different world; she lives in a flat where her father (Yuri Nazarov) drinks steadily and her mother (Lyudmila Zaitseva) keeps the walls from caving in by sheer will. Pichul kept the camera close and unsparing all the way through.

The film hit Soviet cinemas like a pressure release. Its frank sex scene was the first in the country's film history; Negoda landed on the cover of Playboy and toured the international festival circuit. What remains, decades on, is not the provocation but the portrait — an unusually honest record of a generation caught without direction. Stream Little Vera online on iFILM.