Synopsis
Road to Life (1931) is the first Soviet sound feature film — watch online on iFILM. Director Nikolai Ekk made his debut with a picture that won a prize at the inaugural Venice International Film Festival in 1932.
The story is set in 1923, when the Soviet Union is still crawling out of famine and postwar collapse. Nikolai Batalov plays an educator who sets up a work commune for homeless street children — not a detention facility, but a place built on craft and trust. Yivan Kyrla, a Mari poet cast as the street kid Mustafa, carries the film's central question: whether rehabilitation can succeed where punishment has already failed.
Ekk shot this at a moment when Soviet filmmakers were still figuring out what to do with a microphone, and the result holds up as both a social document and a story with real stakes. Stream Road to Life (1931) online on iFILM.
Starring
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