Talyanka (Season 1)

Talyanka (2014) is a Russian wartime drama you can watch online on iFILM. It follows an Italian stage actress and a Soviet pilot whose romance begins under the shadow of World War II and stretches into the uneasy first years of peace, when returning to ordinary life proves harder than surviving the front.

Borders, language and suspicion test what they feel for each other. Joanna Moro plays the actress; Andrei Merzlikin is the pilot kept apart from her by war and the system around them. The supporting cast includes Ekaterina Guseva, Pavel Derevyanko, Daniil Spivakovsky and Igor Sklyar. This is less a story about battles than about two people holding on across a time that gives them no room to.

Built as a co-production, the series trades the usual war-melodrama bombast for something quieter and more human. It will land with viewers who like love stories set on the fault line between eras. Stream Talyanka (2014) online on iFILM.