The best Vladimir Eryomin’s romance movies

Based on the novel by Booker Prize Winner Ludmila Ulitskaya, The Funeral Party is set in August 1991. In a sweltering New York City apartment, a group of Russian émigrés gathers round the deathbed of an artist named Alik, a charismatic character beloved by them all, especially the women who take turns nursing him as he fades from this world. Their reminiscences of the dying man and of their lives in Russia are punctuated by debates and squabbles: Whom did Alik love most? Should he be baptized before he dies, as his alcoholic wife, Nina, desperately wishes, or be reconciled to the faith of his birth by a rabbi who happens to be on hand? And what will be the meaning for them of the Yeltsin putsch, which is happening across the world in their long-lost Moscow but also right before their eyes on CNN?

Strangers on a train. Late in 1916, a brave and idealistic Russian officer in his 20s comes to his superiors' attention when he stands up to Rasputin at a nightclub. He's asked to carry important papers from Petersburg to Stockholm by train in the dead of winter, a dangerous mission. The first-class carriage may be full of spies, and soon after the train embarks, the man in the next compartment searches Obozow's luggage. A beautiful stranger approaches him, a woman older than he, on a concert tour; a game of cat and mouse ensues with patriotism and emotion sometimes on opposite sides. Can Obozow consummate the affair, reach Stockholm, and maintain his ideals?