Filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa draws on three-and-a-half hours of silent footage acquired from the St. Petersburg Studio of Documentary Films to detail the siege of Leningrad for this avant-garde documentary devoid of narration and featuring only the natural sounds of the streets. Over the course of the 900 days that the siege took place, over half-a-million citizens died - primarily due to starvation. The recipient of the White Elephant film award - an honor bestowed upon films by Russian critics - Blockade opens with footage of German prisoners being marched down a central city street and refuses to flinch as the city gradually loses power and the fighting draws ever closer. As strife sweeps through the streets and citizens resort to increasingly desperate measures simply to survive, the lack of narration allows the viewer to for their own, unbiased opinion of the event and its repercussions.
by Jason Buchanan
synopsis
