A sanatorium, a teenage Orpheus, and one last summer before the century turns: The Summer of Our Love is a Russian romantic comedy with music at its heart, directed by Yuri Sharov and released in 2024.
What is The Summer of Our Love about?
The year is 1999, and Sasha has been dragged along on his parents' holiday to a sanatorium. What looks like a dull stay changes when the staff put together an amateur musical of Orpheus and Eurydice and hand him the lead. Playing Eurydice opposite him is Polina, who works at the sanatorium and is admired by just about everyone there. Sasha is smitten almost at once. The trouble is that Misha, who runs the place, considers Polina his own and has no qualms about using every bit of his authority to keep her close. Without quite meaning to, Sasha pulls his whole family into a lopsided contest with a man who holds all the cards, while rehearsals, first love and the heat of the season push the summer toward its finale.
About the cast
Vlad Prokhorov leads the ensemble, with Anfisa Chernykh, Pavel Maykov, Georgiy Dronov, Ekaterina Stulova, Sergey Styopin, Pavel Barshak and Katya Kruglova rounding out the cast. The mix of younger performers and seasoned Russian screen actors suits a story that pits a teenager against the adults around him.
Context & significance
The late-nineties setting is central to the film's charm. Sanatoriums were a fixture of holiday life across Russia, places where families spent weeks on doctor's orders and whatever entertainment existed had to be made by the guests themselves. Staging a Greek myth as a musical in that environment gives the picture a built-in stage for its songs, and the Orpheus story, with its lover who must not look back, mirrors a boy's first serious infatuation. The genre blend here is wide, with drama, comedy, music and romance all listed, and at roughly 114 minutes the film has room for musical numbers alongside the central love story and the family's growing feud with the sanatorium manager.
Watching The Summer of Our Love on Ktime
The Summer of Our Love streams on K-Time with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so you can choose how you hear the songs. Sign in with a free K-Time account to start watching; the Farsi interface makes it easy to find the film from any device.