Burnt By The Sun

By Peter Flannery, from the screenplay by Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekov, directed by Howard Davies.

Cast includes Ciaran Hinds, Stephanie Jacob, Rory Kinnear and Pamela Merrick.

Colonel Kotov, decorated hero of the Russian Revolution, is spending an idyllic summer in the country with his beloved young wife and family. But on one glorious sunny morning in 1936, his wife's former lover returns from a long and unexplained absence. Amidst a tangle of sexual jealousy, retribution and remorseless political backstabbing, Kotov feels the full, horrifying reach of Stalin's rule.

Poised at the beginning of Stalin's Great Terror, Burnt By The Sun shows a brutal future encroaching on the last days of a fading world.