Siberian Lady Macbeth

Ljuba Tadic
Olivera Markovic

Directed by Andrzej Wajda


Shakespearean tragedy collides with film noir in a remote Russian village in this dark fable from celebrated Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda (Danton, Ashes and Diamonds).

Siberian Lady Macbeth observes the cruel machinations of Katarina, a ruthless woman (Olivera Markovic) who will let nothing threaten her affair with a mysterious drifter (Ljuba Tadic). When her father-in-law (Bojan Stupica) discovers the indiscretion, she dispatches him with a dose of rat poison. But soon others, including her husband, sister-in-law and young nephew, develop suspicions of their own... and test the limits to which Katarina's lethal passion will carry her.

The film's barbaric setting (photographed in beautiful black-and-white by Aleksandar Sekulovic) emphasizes the primordial desires that propel its heroine toward destruction, while Wajda's carefully composed images (backed by a score drawn from the works of Shostakovich) endow the film with a visual impact and formal grace that make Siberian Lady Macbeth an unsung classic of Eastern European Cinema.