The Commissar DVD – Lyudmila Volynskya, Raisa Nedashkovskaya

Political and religious-themed drama from the former Soviet Socialist Republic ultimately doomed to be shelved for 21 years for its honest, and thus subversive, nature. During the Russian Civil War, a stanch, dedicated female cavalry commissar in the Red Army falls pregnant against her wishes. Forced to rest while the baby is born, she is cared for by a penniless Jewish family. The family’s open-hearted kindness goes against everything she has previously believed about people of the Jewish faith and, coupled with unexpected feelings of tenderness through motherhood, shakes her belief system to its core. Aleksandr Askoldov, the director, was fired, silenced and ostensibly neutered for the offence of making such an anti-party-stance picture – expelled from the party and banned from making films for life.

The Commissar of the title, played by Nonna Mordyukova, is a Soviet functionary wielding power over a remote Jewish village. Neither she nor the villagers care for the status quo, but over a period of several weeks both come to accept the situation and to establish a detente.

Klavdia Vavilova a Red Army cavalry commissar is waylaid by an unexpected pregnancy. She stays with a Jewish family to give birth and is softened somewhat by the experience of family life.