Rostislav Yurenev

Documentary made for the 60th anniversary of Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein.

An unfinished film by Oleksandr Dovzhenko, the film is a political lampoon based on the book entitled The Truth about US Diplomats, written in 1949 by the American writer Annabel Bukar. It exposes the underhanded actions of US Embassy personnel in Moscow at the onset of the Cold War. Dovzhenko managed to shoot only a half of the film, mainly the scenes that take place in the American Embassy.

Interviews with the veterans of the Great Patriotic War and VGIK alumni Grigory Chukhrai, Valentin Ezhov, Rostislav Yurenev, Vasily Ordynsky, Peter Todorovsky, Vasily Solovyov and the writer and a scriptwriter Boris Vasiliev about their war experience and war cinema.

The film tells the story of the development of Russian and Soviet cinema from the late 19th century to the late 1920s. It focuses in particular on the landmark silent films of Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Alexander Dovzhenko, which have become classics of world cinema.