Kira Muratova is a respected and original contemporary film director, yet her earliest works were not welcomed when they were first shown at the beginning of Brezhnev's 'period of stagnation'. Only in 1987 in one of the first breaths of perestroika were these movies re-released, sending Muratova from talented pariah to celebrity almost overnight. Drawing from interviews with Muratova herself and her friends, unpublished scripts and studies of audiences responses, Taubman traces the progress of Muratova's career and surveys critical reaction to her films, both in Russia and the West.