Intergirl

Pyotr Todorovskiy's 1989 film adapts Vladimir Kunin's 1988 story and became the most watched Soviet film of the perestroika period, seen by more than forty-one million people. Tanya works as a hospital nurse in Leningrad and at night is a sex worker who goes with foreigners in hotels for hard currency. Her marriage to a Swede and departure from the country opens the film's second half. Its strength is carrying the fantasy of escape all the way and showing what is found at the other end: in Sweden Tanya is safe and alone, without the language, belonging to nothing. Treating sex work this openly was an event in itself in Soviet cinema, and the film inflamed the country's moral argument. Elena Yakovleva became a star in the role. Who it's for: viewers interested in late Soviet cinema, social narratives of perestroika and stories of migration. Who it's not for: anyone avoiding content about sex work and suicide, or troubled by the period's moral framing.