“What can be done about it? I’m a woman, not a pet”

Mikhail Romm and Larisa Shepit'ko, two directors with very different backgrounds, experiences, and, of course, genders, nevertheless view their respective female characters quite similarly as they highlight a fate that befell so many Soviet women. As Romm himself asserts, although Nine Days of One Year is about Soviet nuclear physicists, his team focused on creating images of contemporaries and typical representatives of the Soviet intelligentsia. Shepit'ko's You and Me reveal a much different type of Soviet woman, one who at first glance might seem independent and self-determining but, in reality, finds herself backed into a corner. Romm and Shepit'ko, two directors with very different backgrounds, experiences, and, of course, genders, nevertheless view their respective female characters quite similarly as they highlight a fate that befell so many Soviet women. The film Nine Days of One Year presents Liolia, a beautiful and extravagant young woman, in the midst of men who enthusiastically engage in their experiments, debates, achievements, and failures.