The roots of Kira Muratova’s impressionistic style are on display in her first solo feature, which was banned by Soviet censors for twenty years. Through an intricate play of flashbacks and shifting perspectives, Brief Encounters reveals the tangled love triangle that connects a hard-nosed city planner (played by Muratova herself), her free-spirited geologist husband (legendary Soviet protest singer Vladimir Vysotsky), and the young woman from the countryside (Nina Ruslanova) whom she hires as their housekeeper. Blending observational realism with new wave experimentation, Muratova crafts a wryly perceptive portrait of two very different women connected by chance yet each navigating her own dreams, ambitions, and disappointments. (Kira Muratova, USSR, 1967, 96 min.) In Russian with English subtitles
