Directed by Kantemir Balagov • Drama • With Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Vasilisa Perelygina, Andrey Bykov • 2019 • 137 minutes
In post-WWII Leningrad, two women, Iya and Masha (astonishing newcomers Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina), intensely bonded after fighting side by side as anti-aircraft gunners, attempt to readjust to a haunted world. As the film begins, Iya, long and slender and towering over everyone—hence the film’s title—works as a nurse in a shell-shocked hospital, presiding over traumatized soldiers. A shocking accident brings them closer and also seals their fates. The 28-year-old Russian director Kantemir Balagov won Un Certain Regard’s Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for this richly burnished, occasionally harrowing rendering of the persistent scars of war.
Up Next in Kino Lorber
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Bless Their Little Hearts
Directed by Billy Woodberry • Drama • With Nate Hardman, Kaycee Moore • 1983 • 80 minutes
Searching for steady work, Charlie (Nate Hardman) views his chronic unemployment as a kind of spiritual trial. But selling a few catfish can’t sustain a family of five while his wife, Andais (Kaycee Moore)...
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Camille Claudel
Directed by Bruno Nuytten • Drama • With Isabelle Adjani, Madeleine Robinson, Laurent Grevill, Philippe Clevenot, Gérard Depardieu • 1988 • 175 minutes
The biography of the iconic French sculptor Camille Claudel in a tale of love, betrayal and female empowerment. When her enthusiasm for the arts...
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Diplomacy
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff • Drama • With André Dussollier, Niels Arestrup, Burghart Klaußner • 2014 • 85 minutes
As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then ‘only as a field of rubb...
