The first official Soviet cultural delegation to visit Israel in 21 years is due in Jerusalem on June 30, to participate in the Jerusalem Film Festival.
Members of the delegation are film directors Leb Panfilov and Alexander Askoldov, actor Mikhail Ouliano and Actresses Inna Tchurikova and Raissa Nedaskorskaya.
Panfilov’s film, “Thema,” in which Ouliano and Tchurikova starred, won first prize at last year’s Berlin Film Festival.
Nedaskorskaya starred in Askoldov’s film “The Commissar,” which took second prize at this year’s Berlin film fest.
“The Commissar” was banned in the Soviet Union when it was made 20 years ago, after Moscow broke diplomatic relations with Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Based on a 1934 novella by the Russian-Jewish author Vasily Grossman, it is the story of a woman commissar who becomes pregnant during the Russian revolution and is assigned to a Jewish household to give birth.
After the child is born, she returns to the front, leaving it with the Jewish family, The positive light in which the family is portrayed presumably accounts for the ban.
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