Synopsis
Summer 1953 in Satka, a small town to the south of the Urals, somewhere between war-ravaged Russia and the gulags of Siberia. Olga, 23, sole survivor of a family wiped out in the siege of Leningrad, is the latest arrival in a comrnunal ex-barracks where she knows nobody. There is Alexei, the militiaman, who lives with his son Burka and girlfriend Claudia. Jora, a Jew and former victim of Stalin's purges and eccentric photographer-clown with a wooden leg. Friedrich, a former German soldier, married to a Russian; Guerka, a drunken dove breeder and former Nazi collaborator: and Polina, an overblown Ukrainian and her mute companion, Karim the Tatar.Olga gradually settles into the life of this little community, with its joys and sorrows, romantic intrigues and a multitude of incidents, each trying to bury their oppressive past and live with relative insouciance. Jora for example is involved with a blonde widow, mother of two, who becomes his mistress and model; without her knowledge, he sells nude photos of her, and also organizes a major network to srnuggle vodka„ distilled by the couple next door. Olga attends her first ball, organizes a little party in honour of Polina , and gradually cedes to handsome Alexei's gentle but persistent courtship. Individual destinies, moments of intimacy and scenes of communal life succeed one another. Culminating in a final featuring three marriages, a birth and a funeral. Through a myriad of tiny details interspersed with dream sequences, Valerij Ogorodnikov portrays a gallery of tender-hearted, serious and crazy characters, affected by history while somehow living outside it and who now see themselves more as "people from barracks" than Russians of Germans. Adapted from a short story by Victor Petrov "Barak" — a film "dedicated to our parents" — is a tragi-comic portrait of the world of every-day provincial life in rural Russia just after the death of Stalin.
