Thoughts from the committee
Mikhail Kalatozov collaborated with cinematographer Sergey Urusevsky on three films during their careers. Two of these, The Cranes are Flying and This Is Cuba, have been widely hailed, but their middle sibling, Letter Never Sent, has often been overlooked. At long last, we’re excited to share this inventive and gripping tale of survival and exploration, told with a visual flair that would be a profound influence on other Soviet directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky.
A group of geologists are sent to Siberia in a search for diamonds. At first, it seems that the main obstacles to success for the trio and their guide will be the simmering personal tensions that are standard in this type of film. As the northern landscape becomes more hostile to them, in dramatic and surprising ways, their individual desires become insignificant in the face of nature’s implacable power.
Kalatozov’s films have been accused of favouring style over substance – his preference for long, choreographed takes is here, and Letter Never Sent will abandon dialogue for minutes at a time – but he herds his innovative techniques into service of the story. Much of the film was shot on location, and the way Kalatozov and Urusevsky depict the landscape will burrow into your memory and never leave. Fittingly, it’s a diamond to be brought into the light.
“It is a master class of sorts, one that lays bare the building blocks of a dazzling style that remains unsurpassed in the history of cinematic art.” – Dina Iordanova, Criterion