Promised Heaven

The Soviet Union has broken up and a group of people are living on a large rubbish dump at the edge of Moscow. Among them are a former teacher, a former musician, a former officer; all of them were once ordinary middle-class people. They have set up an order of their own on the dump: houses, an elected administration, a division of labour. Then the city decides to clear the place. Eldar Ryazanov's film is late work by one of the best-known directors of Soviet comedy. Here Ryazanov ties the laughter openly to pain: the joke and the poverty are in the same scene. Valentin Gaft, Liya Akhedzhakova and Oleg Basilashvili are in the cast. The film is about the generation that paid for the change, and it blames nobody.