The Youth of Peter

The film tells the young years of the Russian tsar Peter. Those years passed under constant danger for him. The threat came from three directions: some of the Boyars, the rebellious Streltsy and Tsarevna Sophia, who wanted power. Inside that ring Peter builds a circle of his own. The film draws him as intelligent and determined from an early age, and that view is the film’s own. The account shows both the struggle inside the court and the Russia of the period. The hundred and thirty four minutes are spread over several years. The work is a joint production of the Soviet Union and East Germany. Dmitriy Zolotukhin and Tamara Makarova appear in Sergei Gerasimov’s film of 1981.