There Will Be No Leave Today (Segodnya uvolneniya ne budet) (1959)

Complete: Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s second short¹ for VGIK is There Will Be No Leave Today (Segodnya uvolneniya ne budet) (1959). It was thought lost for many years, a likely victim of an archival purge at Soviet Central Television, which co-financed and then aired the 45-minute end result on the anniversary of the German defeat in WWII. (Naum Kleiman, the director of Moscow’s Cinema Museum, located the negative in the 1990s.) Tarkovsky once again worked with Alexander Gordon on screenwriting and directing duties. The production had the full support of the Army (evident in the story’s pro-military slant), while the influx of cash from Soviet Central Television allowed for the hiring of professional actors like Oleg Borisov and some impressively large-scale setpieces.