Q&A with Alexander Markov

This long-unseen Russian drama, never before released in the U.S., follows the life and death of Robert Moussombe, the leader of an unnamed African state. Moussombe is a fictionalized portrait of assassinated Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, and the film’s events are a pastiche of the Congo Crisis in the 1960s, which signified the ascent of the Cold War that unraveled the newly minted post-independence nations on the continent of Africa. U.S. Premiere