Rwanyje baschmaki

Torn Shoes | Zerrissene Stiefelchen
The first Soviet film and also the first that Mezhrabpom-Film made explicitly with children for children. The young woman director, Margarita Barskaya, hitherto completely unknown in Germany, made the film with children between the ages of one and eleven. With them, she achieved a naïve and touching performance that was captivating for its charm and naturalness.

It stands in marked contrast with the view of Germany so characteristic in Moscow at the time. The fable is set in a nameless German port in the early 1930s, shows street battles involving dockers and divides up the performers in line with sociological criteria. Here, the class struggle even reaches as far as the classroom, where it results in wild and magnificently staged fights between the pupils.

Print courtesy of Arsenal - Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V.
by Margarita Barskaja
with Michail Klimow, Iwan Nowoselzew, Anna Tschekulajewa
USSR 1933 84’