I Wish to Speak

The woman who is mayor of a town loses her son in an accident with a gun. She is a successful administrator who has given herself to her work and wants a bridge built for the town; with the bridge new housing would follow. But the people of the town resist the project, and she has to contend with that resistance and with her own grief at the same time. The film asks at what point an administrator stops carrying out what people want and imposes her own idea of what is right. The account neither exalts the woman nor blames her; it shows how a person holds herself up through her work. Inna Churikova plays the lead in Gleb Panfilov’s hundred and forty five minute Soviet film, completed in 1976.