Behind the Iron Curtain

Behind the Iron Curtain follows the journey of three young women from very different backgrounds into the chaotic world of the Soviet music industry – against the expectations of their parents, to the annoyance of the authorities, simultaneously competing and forging lifelong friendships.

Leaving her child with the parents who disowned her is the only way Marilin can join an international singing contest and make her way towards stardom and independence through newly-formed friendships and painful letdowns, dazzling successes and destructive excesses, in various republics of the Soviet Union and its dangers of censorship and treacherous culture of complaint.

A group of young hopefuls gather in an international singing competition. It's outside the official events, however, there is an underground music scene played in untitled clubs. Soviet censors and militia interrupt the party on more than one occasion. Everyone has their own agenda, cassette tapes are hard to come by but music gets copied illegally, sheet music is smuggled in, and lyrics are collected in notebooks. While anything foreign is forbidden, it doesn’t mean Western hits don’t get translated and recorded overnight. There is a market and there are people who know how to make money. Our young singers enjoy the limelight but soon learn the shadows it casts - not getting to choose their music, having to entertain the members of the Communist Party, snitching on behalf of the KGB, being pressured to rat on one’s friends… When Ieva wins the competition, no one is happy, including herself - and no one wants this absurd yet alluring carousel to be over.

Producer's note:
When we started creating this nostalgic postmodern musical drama, our wish was to dive into our past - the hidden cultures controlled by dictatorships, bringing the absurdness of life and the lies that glued it all together into the daylight. It will definitely be a form of emotional escapism for those who grew up with these memories and songs, but also a political commentary that embraces, critiques, and challenges the story of the people living behind the Iron Curtain. From the empty stores to the forbidden cities and colourful scenes of the underground movements, there existed an illogical and irrational, but amusing world. I wanted to focus on the story of duality. How does one cope with the yearning for freedom – mental, physical, creative – and stand up for one’s beliefs? How did we really do it? And could we lend those glasses to look at ourselves today, in the world of political correctness, cancel culture and fake news. One always needs to know how to read between the lines.