Arsenal is not a film that will brighten up your quarantine, but I think it might be one of my most powerful viewing experiences during the pandemic. Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s second feature film was made on commission, on the Bolshevik revolution’s tenth anniversary – but its execution vastly surpasses the narrow constraints of agitprop. Here Dovzhenko manages to bring together, in a splendid cinematographic gesture, war and famine, revolution and death, the sinister poverty of the countryside and the exhilarating boost of change. A film which summarizes complicated times, Arsenal shrouds the New Soviet man’s joy in a thick shroud of sadness.

Victor Morozov

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Film critic and journalist; writes regularly for Dilema Veche and Scena9. Doing a MA film theory programme in Paris.

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