Wednesday March 30th  2022

UK/France/Serbia   2019    123 minutes
Director: Ralph Fiennes
Starring: Oleg Ivenko, Ralph Fiennes, Louis Hofmann

The expression ‘a white crow’ is a Russian idiom for someone we would call ‘a black sheep’: standing out from the crowd, but not always for the best reasons. Rudolph Nureyev certainly fitted this description. Born on a train in 1938, and brought up in a poor family, years of hard training in Leningrad in the 1950s saw him become one of Russia’s greatest ballet stars. It was said that his athleticism defied gravity. But his personality was complicated and flamboyant, and his behaviour often difficult. In Paris in 1961 with the Kirov ballet, and under the watchful eye of the KGB, he saw a chance to ‘escape’ to the West. Could he dare to make such a life-changing decision? ​