Blockade

The siege of Leningrad has become one of the legends of the 2nd World War. It lasted 900 days, and it was not until the 1st of March 1944 that the enemy stranglehold on the city with its several million inhabitants relaxed. The city was constantly bombarded, faced hunger and freezing temperatures, but its people kept on working and adjusted their lives to the situation. The film is compiled from authentic news footage. Individual shots have been grouped in thematic passages about various different aspects of the reality of the siege. The director has added no commentary, and his reanimation of the past is based only on the image and evocation through sound. The film thus gets behind the legend to the real life of people in inhuman conditions, which made everyday existence a struggle for survival in the face of the constant presence of death. The sense that the audience has of living through the events derives from both the immediacy of the images and the rhythmic arrangement of the material, which includes hitherto unused footage of the blockade. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)