Manchuria, 1904. In the midst of the Russian-Japanese War, hospital lead Sergey Karenin unearths a devastating truth—one of his wards, Count Vronsky, is responsible for the death of his mother, Anna Karenina. He goes to Vronsky to ask a single question—what led to Anna’s tragic end? To Karenin’s surprise, the older man agrees to tell the story.
This undertaking, however, proves far more complicated than Vronsky first imagined. Reaching back into the past, Vronsky finds that his tale is not easily told or amended. A journey 30-years gone by, Vronsky’s affair with Anna is recalled in selected fragments, a theme that director Karen Shakhnazarov employs to highlight the web of mistrust that is human memory. Looking back at his own story, Vronsky begins to reflect, ultimately finding himself at a realization that alters his entire view of the love he once shared with Leo Tolstoy’s heroine.
Director Biography
Soviet-Russian filmmaker Karen Shakhnazarov was born in 1951. He is known for the film Courier (’87), which earned him the Special Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival as well as White Tiger (’12), which was the Russian selection for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards.
Press
"This interpretation of the novel does take on the ideological colour of contemporary Russia, but so beautifully is it shot as a set piece, and so operatic its style of presentation, that we watch it mesmerised." - OPEN
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