Russia's dead souls: A tale of two movies and the statue of Anna Akhmatova

Hope flickers in our minds for a country where such movies are made against all odds, including disapproval of the authorities

Ever since my childhood I have been excited, even electrified, by movies. In my college days in Calcutta (now Kolkata), in search of alternative experience beyond Indian and Hollywood movies, I used to frequent the local film society events, showing some commercially unavailable European fare. Short of funds, these film society outfits mainly went for movies they could procure at low cost. The East European consulates in the city were particularly generous in making available films from their countries.

Most of them involved grim, but occasionally gripping, stories of life struggles under Nazi occupation and oppression, laced with heart-warming episodes