Synopsis
Leningrad, one summer in the early eighties. Smuggling LPs by Lou Reed and David Bowie, the underground rock scene is boiling ahead of the Perestroika. Mike and his beautiful wife Natasha meet with young Viktor Tsoï. Together with friends, they will change the destiny of rock’n’roll in the Soviet Union.
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Cast
- Teo YooViktor Tsoi
- Roman BilykMayk Naumenko
- Irina StarshenbaumNatalya Naumenko
- Philip AvdeevLeonid
- Aleksandr GorchilinPunk
- Yuliya AugAnna Alexandrovna
- Nikita EfremovBob
- Georgiy KudrenkoZhora
- Aleksandra RevenkoMaryana's Friend
- Nikita ElenevVirus
Recommendations
- 90
TheWrap
Part fond remembrance of an early-’80s Leningrad rock scene and part glam-rock fever dream, Leto asks an audience to surrender to excess and at times to silliness, and it richly rewards them for doing so. - 80
Los Angeles Times
For a movie about a fleeting moment, it leaves a surprisingly resilient ache. - 80
Time
Leto is one of those movies that whisks us into a world that feels both familiar and fresh, like a sense memory of a life we might have lived if we’d been born in another decade or on another continent. - 75
IndieWire
It’s a shambling, transportive, and semi-tragic story about a fleeting past where anything seemed possible. - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
At heart, it's more concerned with capturing the feel of the early '80s, the paranoia but also spirit of communal life in crowded apartment blocks. - 70
Variety
If not as overtly political as “The Student,” Leto nonetheless represents about as flamboyant a statement of free artistic expression as Serebrennikov could make at this moment: There’s certainly nothing contained or inhibited about its celebration of artists who themselves were given little support or leeway by the Soviet government. - 67
The A.V. Club
What Leto understands is that the lives of these Russian rock pioneers never approached the excess and flashbulb excitement their American and British counterparts enjoyed. Steadicamming through modest concert venues and studio spaces, the film replaces the melodrama of the typical rock biopic with lots of downtime, spent recording and talking about music. - 60
CineVue
Serebrennikov...has a great eye for composition and crafting a set piece, but the meandering pace and loose approach to storytelling makes his second feature akin to an album front loaded with banging tunes and the rest is filler.
