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A nuclear attack of tremendous proportions has devastated a city, which now resides under martial law. A professor hides out in the basement of a museum, sheltering from both the police and the fallout above ground. In his faltering refuge, he fruitlessly composes mental letters to his missing son and tries to find a path to hope for the children sharing the museum shelter.

Letters from a Dead Man offers a rare insight into the Soviet mindset during the Cold War – a counterpoint to the many American nuclear films that present the USSR as a faceless purveyor of destruction. It is also a brilliantly inventive sci-fi dystopia, crafting a brooding and vivid world wrought by nuclear calamity. Director Konstantin Lopushansky was an assistant to Andrei Tarkovsky on the set of Stalker 1979, and he brings a similar level of atmospheric control here through his stunningly rendered, tinted monochrome aesthetic.