Yevgeni Goryunov

"Iskra" is the codename for the plan of the operation of the Soviet troops to break the blockade of Leningrad. In January 1943, the blockade of Leningrad was broken. A corridor 8-11 km wide was formed between Lake Ladoga and the front line.

A story about the tragic events in the life of besieged Leningrad from September 1941 to January 1943.

Two young directors adapted the short stories of two Russian authors whose works had been banned for decades, and so their film ended up in the censor’s vault as well – for twenty years. Both tales look back to the post-revolutionary era: 'Angel' speaks tragically of the brutality and destruction of the time, and 'The Homeland of Electricity' captures its haunting grotesquery.

The Homeland of Electricity, Larisa Shepitko's adaptation of an Andrei Platonov story, was one of three short films collected in an omnibus work (Beginning of an Unknown Era) commissioned to honor the 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution. Censors eventually shelved the film and it would not see the light of day until well after Shepitko's death, during Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika.

Based on the novel of the same name by Nikolai Chukovsky. The end of August 1941. At night, a truck rushes along the last road not yet occupied by the enemy to Leningrad. In the back of two — civil aviation pilot Lunin and commissar of the air division Uvarov. Lunin, a man no longer young, experienced, but had not yet been in battle, was sent to the legendary squadron of fighter pilots under the command of Captain Rassokhin. This squadron fought from the first day of the war and has already lost most of its composition. The story of the harsh everyday life of the defenders of Leningrad, full of heroism and tragedy; about the heavy share of city residents who fell into the ring of an enemy blockade. In the center of the story is the fate of military pilots who had to fight in the sky over Leningrad and the Baltic.