Oleg: The Oleg Vidov Story

Oleg: The Oleg Vidov Story is a documentary based on Oleg Vidov’s life as a Russian actor who escaped at age 42 to America. The documentary documents his rise to fame, his catastrophic marriage into the inner circles of the Brezhnev family, and his heroic escape by illegally escaping Russia.

After escaping, he met Joan Borsten, an Italian journalist, and they became friends—soon after, a couple. They became husband and wife several years later while living in America.

Oleg was known as the Robert Redford of the USSR. When he passed in 2017, he left Joan his autobiography to complete, with a lengthy list of 70 people to interview and many countries to visit. She interviewed top Soviet actors and directors, such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Walter Hill, Roger Donaldson, along with friends and colleagues. It was at this time, she decided to create a biographic film.

The documentary highlights his difficult period of struck off the A-list of actors because of government disapproval, the mental anguish this caused, and his daring escape from  the USSR.

Oleg’s was the first Soviet actor ‘allowed’ to play a non-Soviet hero in a western production made in a western country (Denmark’s “The Red Mantle,” which was nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes). In the Oscar-nominated former Yugoslavia film “Battle for Neretva,” he played a partisan.

Director Nadia Tass documentary comprises talking heads (who offer personal insights) , archival footage (which is fascinating), and narration by the great Brian Cox, that suits this tale of a movie star, a defector, an epic life filled with art and controversy. What truly drives the story home is the sentiment voiced by the actor himself: “I fled the Soviet Union… but Russia is my homeland.”

Tass and writer Cory Taylor trace Vidov’s life, from his early childhood Mongolia and post-WWII Leipzig to his final days in Malibu, California. Early on, American films “opened up a whole new world for him.” After paving his way to super stardom in the Soviet Union, Vidov felt uncomfortable with the ideology forced into most movie scripts. “Communism and Soviet ideology were my least favourite subjects,” Oleg (voiced by Costa Ronin) narrates from his autobiography.

For movie goers like me, this is a fascinating documentary. I knew nothing of Oleg Vidov or his Maria Von Trapp like escape from the USSR. His story is a fascinating glimpse into the world of movie making in Soviet Russia where content is ruled by the state.

The Oleg: The Oleg Vidov Story documentary had its world premiere at the Moscow International Film Festival last April and has since won the top prize in four other film festivals.

Barry Hill OAM

www.olegvidovfilm.com