Siberiade

A village in Siberia that is not on any map: Yelan. Through it the film tells a century of Russia, from the start of the century to the early eighties. Three generations, three undertakings. The first tries to cut a road through the taiga, heading for a star on the horizon, and nobody asks why. The second makes the revolution and builds communism, goes to war, and does not come back. The third drills for oil under the village, and when it is found, it emerges that the village will go under water. The same two families are at each other for a hundred years. Andrei Konchalovsky's film runs four and a half hours in four parts. Nikita Mikhalkov and Lyudmila Gurchenko are in the cast. It won the grand prize of the jury at Cannes in 1979. Real archive footage is cut in among the staged scenes.