Burnt by the Sun

This winner of the 1995 Academy Award® for Best Foreign Film and the Cannes Grand Jury Prize was written and directed by Nikita Mikhalkov, who also stars as Colonel Sergei Kotov, an aging revolutionary hero who is enjoying the sweet life in his country house with his captivating (and much younger) wife Marusia (Ingeborga Dapkunaite), their young daughter and family and friends. Into this idyllic setting enters Dimitri (Oleg Menshikov), a young man who was Marusia's lover a decade ago, before leaving under mysterious circumstances. Dimitri now works for Stalin's secret police, and it becomes clear that this is no social call. A lyrical film filled with beauty and warmth, Burnt By The Sun is also an indelible account of a man dedicated to family and fatherland, cruelly destroyed by political paranoia.