Pyotr - Letters From the Gulag

In 1937, Pyotr Alexeyev was arrested by Stalin's secret service and thrown in a Gulag prison camp for alleged counterrevolutionary activities. More than half a century later, Alexeyev's great-granddaughter came upon a stack of letters that he wrote to his wife in 1938. The camera follows Katya to the Siberian tundra where Alexeyev's camp once stood. Besides a few nameless graves and some ruins, there are almost no signs of the horrible prison camps anymore. The letters reveal how awful life for the prisoners was, even if Katya's grandmother Era thinks her father was sparing her mother the true hardships. When Katya comes to visit Era with the letters and recent pictures of Siberia, the old wounds of the elderly women are scratched open. But there are also happy memories. A male voice reads excerpts of the letters aloud while Katya and her grandmother talk about the past. Era's mother was convinced that Alexeyev's imprisonment was the result of a misunderstanding. "It would've been resolved if he'd come back, but he never did." With supplementary family photos and black-and-white footage of people in the camps, gradually reveals a tragic family history.