East West

In 1946, Stalin extends a controversial invitation to White Russian émigrés to return, promising safety and citizenship. The Golovin family boards a ship to Odessa, buoyant with singing and shared hopes. The voyage hints at a chance to rebuild the shattered homeland, even as uncertainty lingers.

When the ship reaches the port, Soviet authorities sort émigrés into 'fit' and 'unfit' categories. A young man is shot during a desperate attempt to flee back to his father, a stark preview of the danger ashore.

The Golovins settle into a cramped communal apartment in Kyiv, where life is tightly controlled and observers are everywhere. Alexei takes a public health post at a factory, tying his fate to the party line while Marie longs for France.

Marie befriends Matrona, an elderly housekeeper who speaks a little French, but the bond is quickly broken when Matrona is denounced and taken away, dying soon after. The loss underscores the peril that ordinary relationships face under the regime.

Sasha, Matrona's grandson, loses his home when others claim the grandmother's room. Marie invites him to share their space, and a fragile kinship forms amid scarcity.

Marie clings to memories of France and seeks help from visiting French actress Gabrielle, hoping to facilitate an escape. Alexei, meanwhile, publicly praises the Soviet state, distancing himself from his wife's longing.

The rift deepens as Marie takes Alexei's public gratitude as a rebuke. He confesses he has slept with a neighboring woman, Olga, and moves into her room, fracturing the family further.

Sasha earns a place on the national swimming team and wins the trials in Vienna. Afterward, he spends the night with Marie, triggering the coach's warning to keep them apart and tightening the emotional web around the family.

Sasha heads to a Black Sea training camp, while the weight of divided loyalties tightens the Golovins’ already strained household. The state’s reach grows more visible as competition and loyalty pull in opposite directions.

Marie travels with a military choir to a port city as Sasha arranges to be smuggled aboard a ship to the West. After paying the captain, Marie faces brutal interrogation by a KGB official, and Sasha undertakes a six-hour swim to reach the offshore vessel.

A French magazine reveals that Sasha escaped to the West, and Marie is implicated and jailed for six years. Her imprisonment marks the cost of daring to flee and the state’s resolve to punish collaborators.

Two years pass after her imprisonment, and the family travels to Sofia, Bulgaria. Alexei reveals he arranged Marie’s escape by contacting Gabrielle, and Marie and her son escape with Gabrielle to the French embassy, while Alexei is arrested and sent to a Gulag in Sakhalin.

As the Soviet Union moves toward glasnost, Marie’s fate begins to shift, and in 1987 Alexei finally makes his own return to France.

The film closes on the lasting human cost of political upheaval—the endurance of longing for freedom, the scars of coercive power, and the slow, uncertain process of rebuilding a family torn apart by decades of state control.