With Much Love and Kisses – Krepko Zeluju I Lublu (2006)

Directed by: Anastasia Cherkassova | 61 minutes | documentary

‘With Much Love and Kisses’ is a documentary about one of the most infamous penal camps under the Stalin regime: the Solovki Islands, in the icy northern White Sea. The tsars had already figured out that these islands were an ideal place to dump troublesome people, but the amount of political prisoners deported to them under Stalin has been massive. In the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of people died there.

The documentary attempts nothing more or less than to paint a picture of life in this penal camp. This picture is sketched on the basis of what contemporary relatives know about their deceased (grand)parents, and on the basis of historical material: old visual material, diary fragments, letters from prisoners to family, and so on. It’s a documentary about an interesting and even exciting subject, but that can’t prevent the documentary itself from becoming quite boring. The main reason seems to be that there is actually too little material available to make a really interesting documentary. A handful of family members, a few fragments from letters and diaries and film material that had been known for some time: this gives some prisoners a face, but it does not provide any deeper insight into the daily worries at the penal camp, or into the political background of the penal camp.

The fact that the documentary is too monotonous and, moreover, seems all too amateurish, therefore seems to be mainly due to a lack of substantive material and a lack of money. The subject itself is interesting enough, and the angle of highlighting a few people is in itself also a good opportunity to provide more insight into the backgrounds of the penal camp on the Solovki Islands. But then there must be enough possibilities to find sufficient background information, to consult not only relatives but also historians, for example, and to make beautiful film material. Now ‘With Much Love and Kisses’ remains a commendable project by director Anastasia Cherkassova. A project that does not come into its own due to the limited substantive and artistic quality.