Alyonka

Alyonka (1962) is a gentle Soviet family drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Boris Barnet — a filmmaker prized for his light touch. The setting is the Kazakh steppe of the mid-1950s, when families poured in to break the virgin land. Most of the film unfolds in the back of a truck on a long dirt road.

Nine-year-old Alyonka has been sent to the city to study. Her fellow travelers are a mismatched bunch: a worn-out chief mechanic, a young mother with a baby, a newly qualified dentist who can't find a post, a drifter with his dog, and a woman carrying terrible news to her surviving twin. The whole settler world — its small joys, its griefs — reaches us through a child's eyes.

The cast features Natalya Ovodova, Vasily Shukshin and Erast Garin. Barnet drops conventional plot almost entirely and builds the picture from chance encounters, warm and unhurried, free of the era's chest-thumping about taming the land. For anyone who loves slow 1960s cinema about ordinary people, this one rewards patience. Stream Alyonka (1962) online on iFILM.