My Husband Andrei Sakharov

Andrei Sakharov was a brilliant physicist and the father of the Russian hydrogen bomb. The chilling impact of his invention on the security situation in what was then a world divided by the Iron Curtain led Sakharov to express concern about the implications of his work and to become a human rights activist. From the 1960s he was persecuted by the Soviet regime, despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. With the advent of Perestroika he was officially invited to Moscow by President Gorbachev and became a deputy in the Duma; however, he soon became unpopular with many. In this film his wife of many years Yelena Bonner describes Sakharov as a person evocative of the era of dissidents in the USSR. Bonner experienced seven years of exile in the enclosed city of Gorky and isolation from society with the scientist, and supported him whenever he went on hunger strike. Nearly 20 years after Sakharov's death, the testimony of this strong woman, alongside archive footage, captures an intellectual who felt responsibility for his era and never wavered in offering support to those who needed it.