My Husband Andrei Sakharov

Mans Virs Andrejs Saharovs / Latvia/France 2006 / 52min. Russian with English subtitles.
Director Inara Kolmane / Producer Janis Juhnevics, Estelle Robin, Imants Mozers

How did the “father” of the hydrogen bomb, and celebrated intellectual in the eyes of the Kremlin then become champion of human rights, and an enemy of the Soviet regime?

Andrei Sakharov was in many ways the USSR’s Robert Oppenheimer: both deeply involved in developing the first ‘weapons of mass destruction’, only to later turn away from the so-called objectivity of science to confront the difficult issues of conscience. Honoured for his contribution to the Soviet Union’s military dominance, an increasingly recalcitrant Sakharov was later sent into a seven-year exile. Some twenty years later in 1975, he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

My Husband Andrei Sakharov is an intriguing, subdued and intimate discussion of Sakharov’s personal journey and responsibilities through the views of the witnesses of the times and his colleagues including widow, Yelena Bonner and former Soviet Union President, Mikhail Gorbachev. By presenting the facts and their interpretations interspersed with the poeticism of archival footage, the film provides a timely observation on the responsibility of power and the extent an individual will go in support of his personal convictions.

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