"The Russian meteorologist Alexei Vangengheim, who was once a respected government official and loyal member of the Communist Party, fell victim to a Stalinist purge in 1934. Named a 'traitor to the motherland', Vangengheim was sent to a gulag on the Solovetsky Islands and executed three years later in 1937, before being posthumously 'rehabilitated' by the Soviet Union in 1956."
"Named a 'traitor to the motherland', Vangengheim was sent to a gulag on the Solovetsky Islands and executed three years later in 1937, before being posthumously 'rehabilitated' by the Soviet Union in 1956. The powerful short Father's Letters illustrates the letters that Vangengheim had sent his daughter Elya from the gulag, in which he pretended to be on an expedition to study how plant life could persist in the desolate Arctic to protect her from the truth, with hand-crafted animations."
Alexei Vangengheim was a respected Russian meteorologist and loyal Communist Party official who fell victim to a Stalinist purge in 1934. He was labeled a 'traitor to the motherland', sent to the Solovetsky gulag and executed in 1937, with posthumous rehabilitation in 1956. Father's Letters presents the gulag letters Vangengheim sent his daughter Elya, in which he invented an Arctic botanical expedition to shield her from the truth, accompanied by hand-crafted animation. Director Alexey Evstigneev uses that conceit as a metaphor for human fragility and persistence and restores a voice to victims of the Great Purge. Producers: Mimesis and Moderato; Website: Manifest.
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