La maison haute

Directed by Pavel Lungin

Through a first-person narrator, archival footage and photographs, and a contemporary camera, Pavel Lounguine uses the Moscow skyscraper where he grew up as a touchstone for looking back to Stalin and then examining today's Russia. This is Stalin's pyramid, his immortality. We visit people who have lived there for 50 years, see their flats (some modernized, others decaying), and listen to their histories: the son of a KGB man, a retired rocket scientist, a sculptor's son. an actor, seamstresses at a uniform shop, an ex-pat, and two artists. We see a kindergarten and remember marching; we watch parades and discuss surveillance. The commentary is wry: Putin emerges as Stalin's heir.