Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It's a pity, but since "Tired by the sun", eastern European cinematography has lost a credit of trust. Previous year nominee for Oscar for best foreign language movie "East-West" and this year nominee from Russia (didn't make it to the "five best") "His wife's diary" are really well made and significantly acted movies. But they can't step into the same water. Even "Siberian Barber" three years ago had no chance to get a golden statue because of above mentioned film got it in 1995. But, honestly speaking, I can't say the euphoria (and interest at all) about incomprehensible Russian soul has gone. Soviet period keeps a lot of fates, a lot of personalities to make a good movie about. Ivan Bunin, Nobel Prize for literature winner, is just another example of that.Whole story is about last years of a great writer. But it's not just Bunin's search of inspiration for the creativity by the means of other lovers. It's even not a love and passion triangle or polygon in Bunin's house ("You love me, I love him, he loves Galya, Galya loves Margo"). It's not only a course of life result and fear of something that hasn't been written about. It's an unbearable nostalgia and homesickness of an outcast generation that has never got home again (Bunin is buried in the Russian cemetery at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois).Well directed (second movie at all for Alexei Uchitel), good casting (Andrei Smirnov as Bunin and Galina Tyunina as his wife), well tuned soundtrack and perfectly reflected mood of the time make tragic drama "His wife's diary" a very lyric, deeply philosophic and subtle movie.9/10