In 1957 French student Pierre Durand comes to Moscow to do an internship at Moscow State University. Here he meets ballerina Kira Galkina and photographer Valery Uspenskiy. Together, they discover Moscow’s cultural delights – not just the traditional offering, but the underground one as well. During his year in Russia’s capital Pierre leads an entirely different life. However, the internship and the experience of the Soviet people’s way of life are not the only things Pierre is after. He is searching for his father, White officer Tatishchev, who was arrested in the 1930s.
"A Frenchman, the story of a French exchange student's adventures in late 1950s Moscow, makes us painfully aware what a formidable cinematic mind and soul Smirnov has: discrete, educated, good-humoured, politically poignant while never dogmatic – the kind of public intellectual we perhaps need these days more than ever. Watching this film is like looking at a lost world, in more ways than one." (Rotterdam Film Festival)
Andrej Smirnov
Born in 1941 in Moscow. He graduated from the famous VGIK film school in 1962. He made his filmmaking breakthrough with Belorussky Station, one of Soviet cinema’s finest films that won an award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. As an actor, Smirnov won several festival awards and is credited in more than 40 films and television productions. Bowing to intense pressure from the Soviet authorities, he abandoned filmmaking in 1979. He returned to directing narrative films after a hiatus of 32 years.