From the director of Academy Award(r)-winning INDOCHINE comes another highly acclaimed film. Academy Award(r)-nominated (1999) for Best Foreign Language Film, EAST/WEST (EST/OUEST) is a wonderfully imagined film that follows the plight of a young couple and their child as they choose to go back to the Soviet Union in 1946. At the end of the war, Stalin invited Russians who fled the country to return.The talented young doctor, Alexeï Golovine (Oleg Menchikov), accompanied by his French bride, the beautiful Marie (Sandrine Bonnaire), and their son optimistically return to the Soviet Union. Their arrival is a rude one. Interrogations are followed by the grim reality of post-war Soviet Union: shared apartments, suspicious neighbors and lack of privacy. Marie soon starts to rebel against the circumstances, but her husband finds that his talents are needed and appreciated by the authorities so he starts to get ahead. Marie meets up with a touring French actress (Catherine Deneuve), and soon faces a terrifying choice: to leave her husband and child for freedom or stay and confront a grim future.
