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Dersu Uzala
Дерсу Узала
1975 141 min Japan, Soviet Union G 16+
★8.5
Adventure, Drama
Director: Akira Kurosawa
🎭 Based on
«Dersu Uzala»
byVladimir Arsenyev
Trailers
Description
A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.
Budget:
$4M
Starring
Maksim Munzuk
Actor
Yuriy Solomin
Actor
Mikhail Bychkov
Actor
Awards
Academy Awards 1976
— Best International Feature Film
Moscow International Film Festival 1975
— Golden Prize
Moscow International Film Festival 1975
— FIPRESCI Prize
Key opinion
Dersu Uzala is widely celebrated as a masterful, visually stunning collaboration between Akira Kurosawa and the Soviet film industry, exploring the profound bond between a Russian explorer and a Nanai hunter. While most viewers praise its authentic depiction of nature and deep humanism, a minority finds the deliberate, meditative pacing and extended runtime to be overly slow or repetitive.
| Acting | Maksim Munzuk and Yuri Solomin deliver nuanced, highly credible performances that ground the film's philosophical exploration of human connection. | |
| Cinematography | The cinematography beautifully captures the raw, atmospheric essence of the Siberian wilderness, utilizing natural light to create a painterly and immersive visual experience. | |
| Screenplay | The screenplay offers a deeply moving and soulful meditation on friendship, ecological intuition, and the tragic intersection of traditional wisdom with modern civilization. | |
| Score | Isaac Schwartz's score effectively enhances the film’s mysterious, tense, and contemplative atmosphere. | |
| Pacing | The film's meditative, real-time pacing is polarizing: some viewers find it mesmerizing and essential to the story's depth, while others perceive it as dragging, repetitive, and artificially lengthened. |