900 Days

Jessica Gorter's piercing documentary about the German siege of Leningrad—lasting from 1941 to 1943 and claiming a million lives—opens with a sequence showcasing the official glorification of the city's staunch resistance in the face of unimaginable deprivation, presenting it as a nationalist triumph. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev (now prime minister) praises survivors of the ordeal as heroes of the fatherland while they march past him accompanied by a display of military might. But that footage—along with clips from a visit by schoolboys to a museum commemorating the tragedy—serves as a mere backdrop to a series of interviews with people who experienced the horrors. Some of these aged, infirm pensioners still accept the old party line and look upon Stalin as a great leader who fended off the Nazi threat; but others view the government account as a fraud designed to conceal the ineptitude—or sheer callousness—of the Soviet regime in failing to provide needed assistance to the trapped population. Archival footage of life in Leningrad during the blockade coupled with a recitation of statistics about civilian deaths and instances of cannibalism are powerful enough, but even these are trumped by the interviewees' powerful recollections, such as the wrenching account that one woman gives of her sister's and mother's starvation, and what she herself did to survive. Filled with haunting images, 900 Days offers a grim reminder of the suffering that humans are capable of inflicting on one another and of the gross distortion that governments will indulge in to protect their image. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)