DIRECTOR: Kira Muratova
PRODUCER: A Serdykov
PRODUCTION CO: Odessa Film Studio
SCREENPLAY: Kira Muratova, Leonid Zhukhovitsky
PHOTOGRAPHY: Gennadi Karyuk
EDITOR: O Kharakova
MUSIC: ​Oleg Karavaychuk

WITH: Nina Ruslanova (Nadia), Vladimir Vysotsky (Maxim), Kira Muratova (Valentina), Lydia Bazilskaya (Lyubka), Olga Viklandt (Hairdresser), Alexey Glazyrin (Semyon Semenovich), Valery Isakov (Styopa), Svetlana Nemolyaeva (Lelia), Lyudmila Ivanova (Lidia Sergeevna)

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REVIEW

“The roots of Kira Muratova’s impressionistic style are on display in her first solo feature, which was banned by Soviet censors for twenty years. Through an intricate play of flashbacks and shifting perspectives, Brief Encounters reveals the tangled love triangle that connects a hard-nosed city planner (played by Muratova herself), her free-spirited geologist husband (legendary Soviet protest singer Vladimir Vysotsky), and the young woman from the countryside (Nina Ruslanova) whom she hires as their housekeeper. Blending observational realism with new wave experimentation, Muratova crafts a wryly perceptive portrait of two very different women connected by chance yet each navigating her own dreams, ambitions, and disappointments.”

– Janus Films

“The texture of domestic items and the soft geometries of light and shadow enhance every frame of this wry relationship drama, which regularly jumps back in time to scenes from Valentina's and Nadia's separate romances – and rifts – with the impish, nomadic Maxim (Vladimir Vysotsky, a heartthrob folk singer of the time). Muratova mirrors the brokenness of these entanglements in concrete objects: fractured dinner plates, faucets that won't run, a guitar with popped strings, a tattered leather jacket. Some prove fixable. But the tragedy of Brief Encounters is that, despite the film's frequent excursions nto the past, life can't just be restrung or repaired…”

– Natalia Winkelman, New York Times

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FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Palmerston North
Wednesday, 13 March, 6.00pm

Nelson 
Wednesday, 27 March, 6.00pm

Hamilton
Monday, 15 April, 6.30pm

Tauranga  
Wednesday, 01 May, 6.30pm at Luxe Tauranga

Auckland      
Monday, 24 June, 6.15pm 

​Wellington  
Monday, 15 July, 6.15pm

​Whanganui   
Monday, 16 September, 7.00pm

Westport
Tuesday, 08 October, time tba

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