My Motherland

Wang, a labourer from a Harbin flophouse, is recruited into a Chinese warlord's force during the 1929 border fighting over the Chinese Eastern Railway, is captured by the Red Army after a raid, and is treated as a class brother rather than an enemy; the Chinese officers are the villains. The film shows more of ordinary Chinese life than Soviet cinema usually bothered with. It was pulled from release within weeks, and Aleksandr Zarkhi and Iosif Kheifits, at the start of their long partnership, did not make anything comparable for years. A rare survivor of an early-thirties Lenfilm that was still allowed to be curious. 1933.