Mikhail Georgiu

Based on the novel by Booker Prize Winner Ludmila Ulitskaya, The Funeral Party is set in August 1991. In a sweltering New York City apartment, a group of Russian émigrés gathers round the deathbed of an artist named Alik, a charismatic character beloved by them all, especially the women who take turns nursing him as he fades from this world. Their reminiscences of the dying man and of their lives in Russia are punctuated by debates and squabbles: Whom did Alik love most? Should he be baptized before he dies, as his alcoholic wife, Nina, desperately wishes, or be reconciled to the faith of his birth by a rabbi who happens to be on hand? And what will be the meaning for them of the Yeltsin putsch, which is happening across the world in their long-lost Moscow but also right before their eyes on CNN?

Décembre 1940 : un petit groupe de soldats soviétiques s’échappe de la ville assiégée de Vyazma. Alors qu’ils tentent de rejoindre leurs compagnons, ils se retrouvent piégés face à une unité spéciale de la Wehrmacht. Alors que le combat semble perdu d’avance, ils vont trouver une aide inespérée auprès d’un mythe: le Red Ghost. Un fantôme que personne n’a jamais vu et qui sème la mort parmi les Nazis.