In Moscow, in a small production studio owned by Charles Pathé and his brothers in Paris, Aleksandr Drankov initially made documentaries, thus helping to introduce the Russian people to cinema. Another Aleksandr, Khanzhonkov, also lit this path, beating Drankov at his own studio by releasing the first Russian feature film. Drankov himself likely directed the […]

Maria Heiskanen (best actress, Guldbagge Award; Valladolid) is moving and ultimately haunting as Maria Larsson in Jan Troëll’s episodic, though cumulatively very full chronicle of her and her family in early twentieth-century Sweden. She and Sigfrid Larsson, a docks laborer, along with their (eventually) seven offspring, struggle through a hard life, whose unmanning of Sigge’s […]