Full Description
Stalin Thought of You is Kevin McNeer’s portrait of Russian political cartoonist Boris Efimov, whose poison-pen drawings and caricatures filled the pages of satirical magazines from Lenin’s time to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. As the documentary opens, the relentlessly charming Efimov is celebrating his 105th birthday on prime-time television. His survival is made more considerable given that the former Kremlin insider’s beloved brother, journalist and Pravda editor Mikhail Koltsov, was charged by Stalin with being an “enemy of the people.” Just how Boris survived his relationship with “history’s most prolific mass murderer” by carefully navigating the brutal whims of the dictator makes for a riveting narrative. Efimov, whose humorous renderings of German leaders earned him a “find and hang” order from the Nazis, went on to win two Stalin Prizes after the war ended. The interviews that thread through the astonishing archival material find the effusive Efimov recalling a century of Russian history, sometimes challenging filmmaker McNeer while occasionally pausing to let a painful recollection pass. Stalin Thought of You is a dizzying and deeply moving chronicle of two brothers and one dictator whose crossed paths illuminate the complex story of a nation.
