Assassin of the Tsar

One of the new wave of Soviet filmmakers who made his name directing light-hearted comedies and musicals, but with Glasnost turned his attention to challenging the orthodoxies of Soviet life. After writing short stories and film scripts (with his constant collaborator) Alexander Boradyansky, won recognition at international film festivals with his “My Iz Dzhaza/Jazzmen” (1983), “a Winter’s Night in Gagra” and “Messenger Boy”. “Zero City” (1989) shown in the Directors Fortnight in Cannes, is a comedy of the absurd which tells of a Moscow engineer trapped in a remote town where the local museum of Soviet history credits the Soviet people with the invention of everything from the wheel to rock and roll. Utilizing heretofore classified archival material including assassin Yurovsky’s own hand-written report of the execution of the imperial family, the Tsar and Tsarina’s diaries and Alexandra’s journal, Shakhnazarov’s 1990 psychological drama, “Assassin of the Tsar” concerns a doctor at an insane asylum who becomes fascinated by a patient who apparently cured of his belief that he is the assassin of Tsar Nicholas II, appears to know more than he possibly should about the events. —TCM