Living together in a workers' dorm, Katerina and her friends are determined to make it in Moscow. But when a boorish cameraman forces himself on her, Katerina finds herself pregnant and alone as her friends move on. Twenty years later, Katerina is a factory director, outpacing her old roommates career-wise, yet still alone but for her daughter. Love seems possible again when she meets a genial mechanic.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.0/10
IMDb: 8.0/10
Letterboxd: 3.86/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 40%
TMDB: 7.6/10
Director
Vladimir Menshov
Production
Mosfilm
Cast
Vera Alentova, Aleksey Batalov, Irina Muravyova, Aleksandr Fatyushin, Raisa Ryazanova, Boris Smorchkov, Yuri Vasilyev, Natalya Vavilova, Oleg Tabakov, Yevgeniya Khanayeva, Valentina Ushakova, Viktor Uralsky, Zoya Fyodorova, Liya Akhedzhakova, Tatyana Konyukhova, Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy, Georgiy Yumatov, Leonid Kharitonov, Pavel Rudakov, Veniamin Nechaev
Curator Review
Verdict
A sweeping Soviet-era melodrama with real emotional weight, strong social texture, and a memorable central performance. It is also frustratingly conservative in its gender politics, but the film’s scale, structure, and sense of lived-in ambition make it worth seeing as both a crowd-pleasing drama and a cultural artifact.
Best for
viewers interested in women-centered life stories
fans of generational dramas and time-jump narratives
people curious about late Soviet cinema
audiences who like romantic melodrama with social realism
viewers who can tolerate dated or problematic gender politics
Skip if
you want a fully progressive or modern feminist perspective
you dislike melodrama or sentimental endings
you prefer tightly focused, short films
you are sensitive to sexist character dynamics or patriarchal resolution
Overview
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears starts as a story of young women trying to survive and rise in a city that promises everything and gives little away. Its first half has the energy of a social comedy-drama, full of cramped apartments, career hustles, friendship, and disappointment, then it expands into a broader portrait of adulthood and the compromises that come with success.
Worth noting
What gives the film staying power is its emotional architecture: the time jump is not just a gimmick, but the whole point. Katerina becomes one of those rare screen heroines whose competence, loneliness, and resilience all feel central. The movie is often funny, sometimes tender, and occasionally very sharp about class and ambition, even when its ideas about romance and masculinity feel dated or deeply frustrating.
Bottom line
That tension is part of why it remains discussed. It works as a melodrama, a portrait of Soviet urban life, and a conversation starter about how films frame women’s fulfillment. If you can accept that it is both moving and maddening, it has a lot to offer.
Top Letterboxd reviews
AJ Flores · 530 likes
Gosha is a bitch and Katerina deserves better
jujuly (3.5★) · 402 likes
this movie could easily be re-naimed as "moscow does have a lot of shitty man" katerina deserved better
clara (3.5★) · 362 likes
i can’t believe i spent 2h30 (two and a half) hours watching this film just to see katerina end up marrying gosha, that sexist pretentious excuse of a man.
katerina baby i’m sorry
Bowie (3★) · 301 likes
Lovely mise-en-scene, awful fucking message. Would be great if it focused more on the friendships between the women rather than spending an hour on a successful, single mother being fulfilled only through submission to a rustic patriarch.
ann_neva (4.5★) · 273 likes
that scene where the main female character at the university sets an alarm clock and cries, and then wakes up many years later in her apartment with her daughter ... a masterpiece