Flag stadiona: A dusty piece of athletic history

Is it worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have a weird obsession with 1930s Soviet cinema or if you’re doing a deep dive into historical sports films. If you’re looking for a breezy Friday night watch, look elsewhere. Stay away if you get bored by long speeches about collective effort and grainy, static shots of people looking intensely at blueprints.

The film is essentially a time capsule. It carries that heavy, earnest weight you find in movies like The Strong Way. Everything feels like it's trying to build character, but sometimes it just feels like it's building a wall.

The stadium vibe

There’s this one sequence near the middle—I think it’s supposed to be a major turning point—where the camera just sits on a group of workers for what feels like an eternity. It’s almost meditative, but then you realize they’re just standing there. Nobody is moving. It’s like the actors forgot their cues or the director just fell asleep behind the lens. 🏟️

Boris Tenin is doing his best, I guess. He has this look on his face throughout the whole second act that says he’d rather be literally anywhere else. Maybe he was? Who knows.

Oddly specific observations

• The way the extras in the background of the stadium shots seem to be walking in circles. I swear I saw the same guy pass by three times.
• The lighting is either blindingly bright or pitch black. No in-between.
• That weird metallic clanking sound in the background of the dialogue scenes. Was that intentional or just bad audio editing?

It reminds me a bit of the stuff in Kids Wanted, where the sincerity is so thick you could cut it with a knife. It’s almost charming, in a very dated, clunky way. You can feel the movie trying to convince you that building a stadium is the most important thing in the world. Maybe it was!

There's no point in looking for deep psychology here. It’s all on the surface. When someone is sad, they stare at a wall. When they’re happy, they smile at a flag. It’s very straightforward, for better or for worse.

I caught myself checking my watch about forty minutes in. Then I stopped checking because I realized time didn’t really matter in this movie. The plot just sort of floats along like a balloon with a slow leak. 🎈

If you liked the vibe of Voices of the City, you might find something to latch onto here. But really, it’s a niche pick. A very, very niche pick.