And the Past Seems Like a Dream...

Sergey Miroshnichenko's Retrospective, USSR, 69 min., 16+

A motor ship sails down the Yenisei River to the city of Igarka. Its passengers are those who were repressed in the 1930s and 1940s, exiled here, and spent a portion of their lives in this place. Half a century later, those who survived wish to return to their own past. Right now, the ship is filled with joy. A song flows about "...everything will pass, both sadness and joy." Former "convicts" and "special settlers" relax in deck chairs, dance in the evenings to an orchestra, sing to the accordion — and calmly, without anguish, recall their destroyed, crumpled youth. Back then, some were labeled as kulaks, others as spies, and all were sent together to Igarka, nearly to the end of the earth. And though this past seems like a dream, they cannot escape it...