General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Thief (Вор)

The Thief (Вор) is a 1997 Russian-French drama film written and directed by Pavel Chukhrai, set in the postwar Soviet Union and told through the eyes of a six-year-old boy whose mother falls in love with a soldier who is actually a thief.¹^•² It premiered on 31 August 1997 at the Venice International Film Festival, won three awards there, and went on to receive Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Foreign Language Film.³^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Pavel Chukhrai, who also wrote the screenplay¹
Production	Russia/France co-production, 1997; produced by Igor Tolstunov and others; cinematography by Vladimir Klimov, music by Vladimir Dashkevich⁴
Principal cast	Vladimir Mashkov as Tolyan, Ekaterina Rednikova as Katya, Misha Philipchuk as Sanya¹
Setting	Autumn 1952, in a postwar Soviet city; the boy Sanya was born in 1946, after his father died of war wounds⁵
Festival honors	Three prizes at the 1997 Venice Film Festival: International Youth Jury prize, Italian Senate Gold Medal, UNICEF Award¹
Nika Awards	Six awards, including Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Music²
Foreign-language recognition	Nominations for the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film²
US box office	$1,126,506, released 17 July 1998 by Stratosphere Entertainment⁶

Spoilers

Plot

The story is framed as the recollection of Sanya, who was born in 1946, six months after his father returned from the war wounded and died; he never saw his father.⁵ In the autumn of 1952, six-year-old Sanya and his young mother Katya meet a handsome officer named Tolyan on a train. Katya falls in love with him, and the three begin living together as a family; Tolyan's charm and uniform help the widow find housing, and the boy, initially resentful of the stranger, comes to love him as a father.⁷^•⁸

The revelation drives the drama: Tolyan is not an officer but a professional thief who uses the fabricated family as cover while robbing the neighbors in each building they move into.⁹^•¹⁰ He teaches the boy intimidation, fear, and theft, and at one point claims to be Stalin's son, another con that carries the film's central metaphor.⁸ In the Russian-language synopsis published by Film.ru, the betrayed boy eventually kills the man who deceived him.¹⁰

Allegory and reception

Critics read the film on two levels. Roger Ebert, reviewing for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote that the title character represents Stalin and praised the film for letting the symbolism support rather than obstruct a convincing story.¹ The Washington Post's Michael O'Sullivan described it as both a moving portrait of a war widow and her son and "a blunt and powerful allegory of the motherland herself and the conflicted emotional state of a nation under a harshly paternalistic Joseph Stalin."⁷ A Kommersant report on the Moscow premiere likewise noted that the love-hate relationship of the boy and his mother toward the charming recidivist thief can be seen as a metaphor for generations' mixed feelings toward Stalin.¹¹

On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 88% Tomatometer score from 24 reviews, with 21 fresh and 3 rotten, and an 88% audience score from more than 500 ratings.¹ Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "a superb film in the classic style of screen storytelling, at once intimate and epic," and David Parkinson of Empire gave it 4 out of 5, singling out the eight-year-old Philipchuk's performance.¹ Time Out found the film moving and worthy but "deeply conventional."⁸

Origins and production

Chukhrai based the film on a story he heard in childhood, about a war veteran who settled with his wife and child in a communal apartment after the war and then suddenly disappeared, along with valuables stolen from the neighbors.⁴ He said the film drew on memories of his own early childhood and the atmosphere of those years.³

The film was produced by NTV-Profit in co-production with France, with participation from Goskino, CNC, and Canal+, under the credits of Productions Le pont and Roissy Films.¹¹^•¹² Its Moscow premiere took place at the Pushkinsky cinema hall in October 1997, after showings in Venice and at the Kinoshock festival in Anapa.¹¹ The premiere coverage also placed the film within the Chukhrai family circle: the director's father Grigory Chukhrai was the maker of the classic Ballad of a Soldier, and the producer Igor Tolstunov is his son-in-law.¹³

The film is credited with establishing Vladimir Mashkov's image as a sex symbol and one of the prominent actors of his generation, and with introducing Ekaterina Rednikova and the young Misha Philipchuk to audiences.¹⁴

Release and box office

The film's original release date was 31 August 1997 at Venice, with the Russian premiere on 13 October 1997.³^•⁴ In the United States it opened on 17 July 1998 through Stratosphere Entertainment and grossed $1,126,506 domestically, with a 2021 re-release in New Zealand adding $96.⁶ Kinopoisk lists US admissions of 239.8 thousand, with 47 thousand in Spain and 23.3 thousand in Italy.⁴

Audience ratings have remained strong: Kinopoisk users rate it 8.0 from more than 151,000 votes, and IMDb lists 7.6 from about 6,000 votes.⁴^•¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films late 1990s › Released 1995 to 1998

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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