This Academy Award-winning film reaches back into the dark past of Stalinism, weaving together personal and national history with Nikita Mikhalkov’s customary sense of irony and allegory. Set in 1936, as Stalin’s purges gather momentum, Mikhalkov plays a retired officer who has retreated to the country with his wife Maroussia and six-year-old daughter Nada. When a former lover of Maroussia arrives, burdened with terrible purpose, the family’s idyll is shattered.