TOVARISCH, I AM NOT DEAD/I'M LAUGHING

The bravery of generations past never ceases to astound and this British documentary adds another stunning history to the record.

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The man in question this time is Garri Urban, born uneventfully in 1916, then going on to become a veteran of both the Russian Gulag and the Holocaust.

Did he complain? Hell, he did. More like he took the blows, stood up and marched on.

The title of the film comes from one of his more symbolic adventures, a dangerous attempt to escape the Soviets by swimming an icy river into Romania. He braved the cold but was felled by a sniper's bullet and pulled lifeless from the water, only to exclaim: "No, Tovarisch (Comrade), I am not dead", before striking his captor.

Whatever inspired such bravery, such bravura? It is a question that long troubled his son, fillm-maker Stuart Urban – born Isle of Wight and acclaimed as the youngest director ever featured at the Cannes Film Festival, age 13.

Urban had the benefit of his father’s 1980 autobiography in his search for insights but in 1992, after the Wall came down and Communism was disintegrating, he had something even better: the chance to travel with his father Garri into the former Soviet Union, a world he has escaped in 1946.

He traveled with his cameras and the diaries made during that trip and over the following 14 years, including investigations into Garri’s KGB records, form the core of the film.

Garri Urban himself died finally in 2004, a sad loss, but a passing that allowed his son to dig even deeper into the past, unearthing details that his father was either too humble or too pained to face and they elevate this story into an illuminating tale of familial relationships.

Further details on the story are available on the website www.tovarisch.net.

The film opens at selected cinemas in the UK on May 2, 2008.

Posted April 1, 2008.