Three lifelong friends, whose fathers have been killed in the war, return to Moscow after their military service where they see their aspirations juxtaposed against everyday life in 1960s Soviet Union. They seek pleasure and purpose in Moscow’s counterculture of jazz, folk music, and poetry.

Brought under scrutiny after Ilych’s Gate (labelled “morally sick” by Khrushchev!), the great Soviet filmmaker Marlen Khutsiyev drastically re-edited this generational portrait into I Am Twenty. Reminiscent of the French New Wave, it captured the angst and anxiety of this “Khrushchev Thaw.”