Soviet Elegy

This fifth Elegy is a devastating picture, bordering on cruelty, of Boris Yeltsin, where the Russian leader is removed from the public arena of speeches and official propaganda to be inserted into the Sokúrov scene par excellence: in place of silence, continuous time and inaction. The spectator, in turn, will have before him one more spectacle of visual ambiguity, a contradictory stage of immobility, bordering on paralysis and death. “In spite of the fact that Yeltsin came to power by conventional means, his personality is extraordinary and bears with it high doses of the unpredictable, which I attribute to an uncommon human nature”, says Sokúrov. “Our hero is part of a tragic amalgam of the Soviet socialist civilization. He is the main character in a drama of which he is, also, one of the authors.”

Was born in 1951 in the city of Podorvikha, Russia. His work, even as a student, was unacceptable to Russian bureaucracy, and he was accused of formalism and of assuming "anti-Soviet views". His first feature, The Lonely Human Voice (1978, 26th Mostra) was refused as a graduating project by the VGIK, the Russian Cinema Institute. Sokurov`s films were shown in Brazil since 1997, at the 21st Mostra, with Mother and Son. He had a retrospective of 33 of his films at 26th Mostra, when was also released the first book in Portuguese about his work, Aleksandr Sokúrov, by publishing house Cosac Naify. Among his most important films are Dolce (1999, 24th Mostra), Elegy of a Voyage (2001, 25th Mostra), The Russian Arc (2002, 26th Mostra), Father and Son (2003, 27th Mostra) Alexandra (2007, 32nd Mostra), in addition to the films that complete the Power Tetralogy: Moloch (1999, 23rd Mostra) about Hitler; Taurus, about Lenin (2001, 26th Mostra), and The Sun, about the Japanese emperor Hirohito (2005, 30th Mostra).

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA

43ª MOSTRA INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA