DEAD MAN’S LETTERS

Under an ash-black sky, where the sun will never be seen again, there’s horror and desolation. A nuclear accident happened, devastating the Earth, and burning each and every living being. Humanity hides in unsanitary shelters, while martial law is striking. The holocaust survivors, those who were not affected by radiation, are systematically led to a centre where they are confined, maybe for life: the “Bunker”. The others quickly die and their corpses litter in the devastated city ruins…
As a student and assistant of Andréi TARKOVSKI, Constantin LOPOUCHANSKI draws with Dead Man’s Letters the unbelievable portrait of a slaughtered humanity, victim of its own madness, with the messy reflexions of an old scientist whose Nobel Prize is useless now.
As the movie was out some time before the Chernobyl disaster, it caused a scandal in the Soviet Union. And “when seeing this terrifying tragedy, we can only wonder about the movie production, which was impossible some years before. LOPOUCHANSKI only needed the scientific authorities’ support to direct his work, defying any conservative authority who rules the cinema industry.” – Daniel SCOTTO