‘Imperium’ Review: Sergei Loznitsa Brings Together Nearly Three Hours of Italian Footage From the Early 1970s Covering the Vastness of the USSR

Sep 7, 2026 5:15am PT ‘Imperium’ Review: Sergei Loznitsa Brings Together Nearly Three Hours of Italian Footage From the Early 1970s Covering the Vastness of the USSR

Journeying from Moscow to the Soviet Far East and then back west, this sprawling documentary shows a multicultural nation stubbornly resistant to Politburo attempts at homogeneity.

By Jay Weissberg

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Jay Weissberg

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Essential Filmproduktion, Kino Produzioni, Société Parisienne de Production, Studio Uljana Kim

In the early 1970s, Italian film crews spread out across the USSR, capturing a vast, multicultural empire few had ever seen in such diversity. From urban commuters to village fêtes, Baku trawlers to Siberian reindeer herders, the cameramen aimed to capture the Soviet polity at a time when Westerners had a gray, monolithic image of what lay behind the Iron Curtain. Granted official permission, they managed to resist any push towards propaganda, even finding ways to slyly critique a system that proclaimed regional autonomy but controlled everything from the Kremlin. While planned as a monumental, multi-chapter TV series, only a few episodes wound up being broadcast on Italian TV, just once, following which the endeavor lay forgotten in the archives. If ever there was a project for Sergei Loznitsa, this was it.

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