(Pisma myortvogo cheloveka)
Directed by Konstantin Lopushansky
88 minutes
In Russian with English subtitles

Konstantin Lopushansky was an assistant to Andrei Tarkovsky during the shooting of the Soviet-Russian film Stalker. Many consider Lopushansky the only true heir to Tarkovsky's visionary flair for philosophical and spiritual ethics, matched by transcendental aesthetics. In this debut film he fused together rich visuals with a dark scenario, creating a dusky, illuminated gem. 

This is a dystopian post-apocalypse flick shot in a golden haze (the cinematography is not black-and-white, but black-and-gold). It's set in a world where there is no longer any light or dark, only a perpetual misty twilight. It is a treatise on the fragility of human existence, but also on the nature of art, literature and creativity. Above all it is a plea to care about the planet we are living on, which we are ruining so recklessly. It has a story—about a scientist living in a library, recording his last thoughts to his son—but the real drama is in the haunting mood and an acute depiction of our earth's last dying gasps for breath. The characters in the film live under broken buildings, and in caves and tunnels, and can only go to the surface with gas masks, entering a landscape with nothing left but ruins, wreckage and human remains. It's poignant that the place they are hiding is the basement of a former museum of history. 

It is harsh, poetic, and hopeful—all at the same time. The screenplay was written by director Lopushansky along with orientalist Vyacheslav Rybakov and sci-fi writer Boris Strugatsky.

This is yet another relic that has been buried for years, with a deep Tarkovskian vibe. It resonates with a missing sense of humanity that we need to recover these days.