Sunday Screening – Stalin Thought of You

By the time of his death in 2008 at the age of 109, Boris Efimov had created political cartoons on just about every world event over the past hundred years. Working for the Soviet press, Efimov drew images that were equally powerful and hilarious.

From World War II, when the Nazis had given orders to hang him on sight, through the Cold War Boris  Efimov created thousands of images that riled the powerful and created a titanic legacy we are now fortunate enough to see in Stalin Thought of You. 

Behind the humour however lay what Boris Efimov described as “a wound that does not heal”: the execution of his older brother Mikhail Koltsov. The acclaimed journalist who was a pal of Ernest Hemingway and also a Soviet spy, always looked out for his younger brother. To his dying day Boris  Efimov worked and slept under his older brother’s portrait.

Both Koltsov‘s fate and Efimov’s response are bound up in their complex relationship with Stalin.

Through rarely seen footage from the Russian State Film Archives, animation and Boris  Efimov‘s enormous body of work, we are given insight not only into satire but into some of the darkest episodes of the 20th century and the part played by this lesser known aspect of the press.

Directed by Kevin McNeer
60 minutes