Cinema across borders

I will begin with a confession. I have loved Russian cinema since my young days, when it was still Soviet cinema. If that makes me biased, so be it. Some biases are simply the truth, held with affection.

I came to these films as a young admirer and later came to know them more deeply as a student of Russian. There was Gaidai's Kidnapping, Caucasian Style and The Twelve Chairs, and Motyl's White Sun of the Desert, which cosmonauts still watch before flying, a ritual that has now travelled with them to American launch sites. In Russia, lines from these comedies became household phrases, quoted at dinner tables and in offices to this day. Once you know them, you hear them everywhere. It was a cinema that could make you laugh, make you weep and make you think, often in the same film. So when I sat down to watch four new Russian films recently, I carried a heavy question with me: does today's Russian cinema live up to that legacy? I walked out certain that it does.

I am not alone in that view. The celebrated American critic Roger Ebert called Russian Ark, a film shot in a single unbroken take through St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum, "one of the best-sustained ideas I have ever seen on the screen”. The New York Times found the Russian sci-fi thriller Sputnik "a genuinely scary and satisfying experience”.

Pakistani audiences got to judge for themselves at the end of this summer. Four recent films were screened at Centaurus Cineplex in Islamabad at the end of August and at Raiha Cinegold Plex in Bahria Town, Rawalpindi, in early September, all in Russian with English subtitles. They could hardly have been more different from one another, and that range was itself a statement.

The first, The Golden Key, is a new screen version of Buratino, Alexei Tolstoy's much-loved Russian retelling of Pinocchio, the story of a wooden boy that every Soviet child knew. It is lavish and stylish, with a star cast and beautiful camerawork. Russian critics compared it favourably with the classic Soviet version, and one wrote that among the many remakes of old favourites, this one truly shines. What stayed with me was Papa Carlo, a lonely old craftsman who carves a puppet to earn his bread and ends up with a son. In Pakistan, where parents still look to a son to support them in old age, that story needs no translation.

Chebi 2: My Fluffy Friend gave families the same warmth, and even more laughter. Ask a Russian about Cheburashka and you get the look a Pakistani gets at the mention of Uncle Sargam: instant, fond recognition. Russian audiences were clearly waiting for him. The film has become the highest-grossing film in Russian box-office history, and critics found the sequel funny, lively and touching almost to tears. The story is simple and true. Cheburashka is growing up and testing limits, and his friend Gena struggles to raise him. The lesson is that families survive by listening to each other. It was a film Pakistani parents and children could watch together without a single awkward moment.

It was the last film, however, that I have not been able to stop thinking about. As a student of Russian, I learned about the siege of Leningrad long before I ever saw it on screen. I read the diary of 11-year-old Tanya Savicheva: a few small pages, each marking the death of someone she loved, ending with the words "Only Tanya is left." I read poems by Olga Berggolts, the voice that kept starving Leningrad alive by radio through the siege, whose words, "No one is forgotten, and nothing is forgotten," are now carved at the cemetery where its victims lie. The blockade lasted nearly 900 days. Its lifeline was the Road of Life across the frozen Lake Ladoga: ice that carried bread in and children out, and too often gave way beneath the lorries.

I am not ashamed to say I wept. I wept for the children, and for the young people who became their angels. I also wept because the film confirmed something I have always believed about the Russian people: their memory of suffering has made them not bitter but deeply humane. The director never lets spectacle overwhelm the people on screen. Every frame of white, cracking ice carries dread, and every small kindness lands like a blessing. I left the cinema quiet and stayed quiet for a long time. If I could recommend only one of these films to young Pakistanis, it would be this one. We, too, are a nation that knows sacrifice, and Angels of Ladoga speaks our language, even in Russian.

What united all four films, beyond their stories, was their craft. The cinematography, sound design, visual effects and editing meet every international technical standard. On the big screen they held their own against anything Hollywood sends us. That is no small achievement. It reflects serious investment in studios, technology and film education, and a generation of filmmakers who know exactly what they are doing.

This matters well beyond the cinema hall. Most Pakistanis know Russia through headlines. These screenings showed them the Russia that headlines leave out: its humour, its family values, its fairy tales and its memory of war. After a lifetime of teaching Russian, I can say that one good film often teaches more about a culture than a semester of lectures. Our two peoples share more than they realise: respect for elders, the centrality of family, and a deep memory of sacrifice. Cinema makes those bonds visible.

That is why this initiative must not remain a one-off. Russian film days should travel to Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta, and to our universities, where curiosity runs highest. Urdu subtitles would widen the audience further. The exchange should also run both ways, with Pakistani films shown to Russian viewers. Co-productions between our two industries are not a distant dream. They are a natural next step.

The Soviet films of my youth taught me to love a language and a people. Today's Russian cinema is ready to do the same for a new generation of Pakistanis. Let us give it every screen we can.

The writer is Head of the Department of Russian Language at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad, and a recipient of the Pushkin Medal

All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer