History tells us that Fanny Kaplan tried to assassinate Vladimir Lenin in 1918 and confessed: “Today I shot at Lenin. I did it on my own.”
History also tells us that Kaplan, who was part of Socialist Revolutionaries that was suspicious of Lenin, was executed just four days later, with a bullet to the back of her head, even as she – she had become blind – was made to walk towards the sound of a car’s engine. Her body was put into a barrel and set alight. She was 28.
There have been doubts whether she was actually guilty of the crime. Director Olena Demyanenko’s My Grandmother Fanny Kaplan , which was screened as the closing film of the week-long Kozhikode International Film Festival, also raises the question about her culpability.
This fascinating film from Ukraine was not in the original list of the festival. But, it turned out that the organisers could not have hoped for a better film to end what has been a fine festival.
It succeeds in telling the tale of a remarkable woman in a most engaging way. We meet her as a teenager who runs away with a bandit-turned-revolutionary and her affair with a doctor, who is the brother of Lenin. Kate Molchanova has played her with aplomb.
My Grandmother Fanny Kaplan is certainly one of the films the delegates of the festival would not forget in a hurry. Most of the films, in fact, were quite good.
