My Friend Ivan Lapshin

35 mm | 1985 | Directed by Aleksei German | Soviet Union | 100 mins | Russian

Set in 1935 in the fictional provincial town of Unchansk, Alexei German’s first film to receive wide international exposure–and his only to include several color sequences–unfolds through the prism of time, as a present-day narrator recalls his youth in a crowded communal flat whose residents include the socially awkward police inspector of the title. Adapted from stories written by German’s father Yuri, My Friend Ivan Lapshin chronicles the material deprivations and minor satisfactions of communal life during the time in which Stalin’s cult of personality became a routine part of everyday life…and gangsters still ran rampant. Part adventure, part social commentary, Lapshin is a richly complex memory film about a crucial historical era rarely addressed in Soviet cinema. (Print from Kino Lorber and Seagull Films; note adapted from Film at Lincoln Center website.)

Sponsored by the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Film and Media Studies Program, Yale University.