The Long Way Home, directed by Michael Apted, tells the story of underground Soviet rock legend Boris Grebenshchikov’s odyssey to the West to make an album in 1988 and bring it back home in the early, optimistic days of Glasnost.

Signed to CBS Records, Boris, who was fluent in English but had never been outside the USSR, was soon sharing a stage in Montreal with Crosby, Stills & Nash, then shuttling from Leningrad to New York, London and L.A. for recording sessions with producer Dave Stewart (of Eurythmics), and guest artists Annie Lennox, Chrissie Hynde, and Ray Cooper. 

But Boris’s rock & roll dream turned bittersweet when the members of his long-time band, Aquarium, felt abandoned and his Russian fans, who had been inspired by him for years, were unsure about the English-language songs he performed in Leningrad with Stewart at his side – the climax of the film. Still, at the end of this journey Boris was optimistic, believing that collaborations like his with Stewart were harbingers of a new era for Russia.

Sadly, this hope was short-lived. Putin’s rise to power ended the dreams of democracy, and hundreds of thousands of freedom-loving Russians are now living in exile. Boris is one of them. As a critic of Putin’s war on Ukraine, he had to leave his homeland or face arrest and prison. His music has been banned in Russia, and he’s been designated a foreign agent. Now living in London, he continues to record and perform around the world, raising the spirits of fellow Russian expatriates and exiles.

So, the time feels right to re-release Michael Apted’s eloquent documentary as a reminder of what might have been (and could yet be) and of the enduring power of music to raise spirits and resist tyranny and censorship.

The Long Way Home was originally released in 1989 to critical acclaim. After broadcast in the UK (Granada), US (Discovery) and in several international markets, it was briefly available in the US as a VHS home video, but by the early 21st century it had vanished, like many documentaries of its time.  Michael Apted hoped to one day make a sequel, but this goal remained unfulfilled when he died in 2021.

At the end of the original film, title cards updated viewers about the release of Boris’s album, Radio Silence, and the lives of Boris and key band members. Thanks to the generous support of donors, producer Steven Lawrence and the film’s editor, Susanne Rostock, have made a new epilogue that tells what happened to Boris after the release of Radio Silence and brings his journey into the present, including his exile from Russia after speaking out against the invasion of Ukraine. This 14-minute coda partially fulfills Michael Apted’s wish to make a sequel. The remastered film is dedicated to his memory.

Steven finished remastering The Long Way Home this past summer. The primary source elements were a 16mm print that he kept, and one inch and digibeta tapes of the original master with stereo mix. These were used to make a gorgeous 4K master with 5.1 sound.

Now, Steven is raising an additional $40,000 to pay for marketing and publicizing  the film in 2026. He is planning educational distribution to university Slavic studies departments, one-off theatrical screenings in a few US cities, followed by digital distribution on major platforms. A percentage of net revenues will be earmarked to support victims of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Appropriate charities are being vetted. 

It is spring of 1988. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has recently launched his policy of Glasnost, or openness. Signed to CBS Records by American co-managers KENNY SCHAFFER and MARINA ALBEE, BORIS, who is fluent in English but has never worked outside the USSR, is soon laying down tracks for his first English-language songs in NYC with producer DAVE STEWART. The next week he’s joined in Montreal by his band of 15 years, Aquarium. They share a stage with Crosby, Stills & Nash at a benefit concert.  For Boris’s bandmates it is their first trip to the West. The relative opulence amazes them.

The next day the group records a song for the album at a luxurious lakeside studio outside Montreal, but the session is disrupted by arguments between Boris and the bandmembers about the arrangement, with cellist SEVA GAKKEL dismissing it as, “Russian corn.”

Back in Leningrad, we see the city’s haunting beauty through Boris’s eyes, with its grand canals and old Italianate buildings. At this moment Leningrad is alive with summer crowds enjoying street music “It’s something new,” says Boris – a sign of Glasnost’s impact.  Fans come up to him for autographs. The stairwell of his apartment building is filled with graffiti praising him and his songs. At home with his wife LYUDA and their young son, GLEB, Boris can finally relax.

The members of Aquarium have been changed by their trip to Montreal. Bass player and musical director SASAH TITOV now realizes how poor and unfree life in Russia is, and how the smell of garbage is everywhere. Hopefully it will be different for his beloved baby daughter. Seva and drummer PIOTR TROSHENKOV fear they are not equal to Western musicians and Boris will abandon them, but Boris maintains they are too close for this to happen – “You cannot leave a family.” 

At the Leningrad Rock Club, Boris and band perform This Train’s on Fire, Boris’s rousing anti-war anthem about a colonel who tells his troops it’s time to end 70 years of fighting and reclaim their land. The young audience is on its feet, but when Boris visits his mom, LUDMILLA, she tells him he must rock out more consistently so he can lift up his audience like Elvis did. Boris hears her out but says he can only do what’s right for him.

After June sessions in London with Dave, where singers ANNIE LENNOX and CHRISSIE HYNDE record backup vocals, and RAY COOPER adds percussion, Boris and Aquarium retreat to a dacha on the Gulf of Finland where they play together and try to rebuild their closeness, but the band members remain uneasy about Boris’s new songs and the future.

A few weeks later, Boris brings only Sasha to LA for final recording sessions at Dave’s home studio. By this point Boris is struggling to maintain his artistic gravity, unsure about the polished rock style Dave has brought to his songs. Dave captures his confusion in an impromptu song, “The Ballad of Boris,” that he performs on guitar for Boris and Sasha. It ends with the lines, “It’s all about the land of the USSR, it’s the land that he’s forgot.”

Boris and Dave have decided to premiere the album, Radio Silence, for Boris’s hometown fans in Leningrad. It’s November and as Dave and band members from Eurythmics travel by bus across the Finnish border, snow is falling heavily. This journey and the band’s arrival are intercut with Boris and Aquarium performing one of his most beautiful and poetic Russian songs, The Boy.  

Under Dave’s direction, Aquarium and Dave’s band rehearse the Radio Silence songs, trying to overcome language barriers and achieve musical cohesion. Two sold-out shows are scheduled at Leningrad’s largest sports arena. On the first night, Boris asks his fans to be openminded about his English songs and introduces Dave. He and Boris perform a riveting acoustic version of Boris’s Russian song, Stones in Cold Water. The rest of the show goes well, with the combined band finding its groove for the English songs, but post-concert fan statements reveal that audience reactions are mixed.

Boris and Dave aren’t satisfied and next morning rework some arrangements. That night, the improvement shows in an ecstatic performance of Radio Silence. As the band begins The Postcard, a song about Boris’s homesickness for Russia and the woman he loves, we cut away to him reflecting on his odyssey. He believes that the future will be, “Neither East nor West,” but like where he is now, collaborating with Dave and creating a bridge. The film ends with Boris onstage in close-up, pouring his soul into The Postcard, shouting out its final refrain, “You are on my mind,” until he is on the verge of collapse.

Epilogue: The original epilogue used brief title cards with details about the album’s release in 1989 and updates on Sasha, Piotr, and Seva.  It ended with the optimistic statement that Boris was writing songs for a new Aquarium album to be recorded all over the world.

In the new epilogue, viewers learn that after a controversial appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, Boris abandoned the idea of crossing over in the West and returned home. He disbanded Aquarium and resumed writing Russian songs, touring every nook and cranny of Russia he couldn’t visit during Soviet times. This period resulted in some of the best work of his career. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Boris spoke out against the war and had to move to the UK to escape arrest and imprisonment. His music was banned in Russia. Based in London,  he resumed writing and performing, including a benefit single and album, produced by Dave Stewart, to raise money for the Children’s Hospital in Kyiv. He formed a virtuoso new band, BG+, made up of fellow Russian expatriates, including Boris’s son Gleb on percussion and Sasha on bass, and two brilliant Irish musicians. To stay connected to his Russian audience, he mastered social media and began posting intimate solo performance videos every week under the banner, Offerings for Interesting Times. At times, the new epilogue flashes back to The Long Way Home connecting past with present. It ends with Boris amazed that he has survived to the age of 71, still passionate about songwriting, and fiercely dedicated to touring the world to raise the spirits of Russian expatriates and exiles.

Michael Apted, Director

Michael Apted made documentaries and feature films for over forty years. Among his globally recognized, award-winning documentaries are the UP SERIES (1964-2019), which followed the lives of 14 British people from the age of seven, revisiting them every 7 years; THE LONG WAY HOME; MOVING THE MOUNTAIN; INCIDENT AT OGLALA and THE POWER OF THE GAME. His movies include COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER (which received 7 Academy Award nominations and won Best Actress for Sissy Spacek); GORKY PARK; GORILLAS IN THE MIST; THUNDERHEART; NELL; the James Bond film THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH; ENIGMA; AMAZING GRACE, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER; CHASING MAVERICKS and UNLOCKED. He also cast the HBO series ROME and directed the first three episodes, and directed several episodes of RAY DONOVAN and MASTERS OF SEX for Showtime. In 2019, 63 UP was released theatrically. Michael was President of the Directors Guild of America for an unprecedented three terms, from 2003 through 2009.

Steven Lawrence, Producer/Epilogue Co-Director

Steven is a producer-director and media pioneer who has been making documentaries for over 30 years about artists, activists and everyday heroes – from underground Soviet rockers, to a Senegalese rapper fighting female genital cutting, to cat rescuers in Brooklyn, and scientists racing to save the human microbiome. As a producer his work includes three feature docs in collaboration with Michael Apted, including THE LONG WAY HOME and MARRIED IN AMERICA. He created the International Emmy-award winning series BORN IN THE USSR producing the first film, AGE 7 IN THE USSR. Among his other producing credits are THE FURIOUS FORCE OF RHYMES, SARABAH (Movies That Matter Golden Butterfly award), and Heddy Honigmann’s 100 UP. His directing credits include TELL TCHAIKOVSKY THE NEWS; ROCK IN RUSSIA for MTV, the interactive documentary series VIS à VIS series for PBS, THE CAT RESCUERS, winner of the 2018 Hamptons International Film Festival animal rights award, and THE INVISIBLE EXINCTION (with Sarah Schenck). He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, Helen Garrett.

Susanne Rostock, Editor/Epilogue Co-Director

Esteemed as “an aural and visual poet”, Susanne’s most recent film as director/editor, FOLLOWING HARRY, joins the artist and activist Harry Belafonte, at the age of 84, as he embarks on an eleven-year journey to find out how to redirect oppression to oblivion. The film premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival. It’s a sequel to SING YOUR SONG, Susanne’s film about Harry Belafonte’s earlier life as an artist and activist. It was chosen to open the U.S. Documentary Competition section of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and was Shortlisted for an Oscar. It also garnered the NAACP Image Award. Susanne’s 20-year collaboration as editor with director Michael Apted produced such richly provocative films as: THE LONG WAY HOME; INCIDENT AT OGLALA; ME & ISAAC NEWTON; INSPIRATIONS; THE POWER OF THE GAME; MOVING THE MOUNTAIN. As producer and editor, she is presently completing ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS, a feature-length documentary about homegrown American terrorism, directed byJim Chambers. Susanne is also producing, directing, and editing BETWEEN STARSHINE AND CLAY: THE HIDDEN DIARY OF DIAHANN CARROLL, co-directed by Suzanne Kay and executive produced by Serena and Venus Williams. She resides in New York City.

Peter Gilbert, Cinematographer

Peter is an American documentary filmmaker, film producer, and cinematographer. He was the cinematographer and one of the producers of HOOP DREAMS a 1994 documentary about two teenage basketball players in Chicago. He has worked on several films for Kartemquin Films, including VIETNAM, LONG TIME COMING, AT THE DEATH HOUSE DOOR, (which he co-directed with Steve James), and IN THE GAME. He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking in 2005 for producing WITH ALL DELIBERATE SPEED, a documentary about Brons Vs. Board of Education. Prior to HOOP DREAMS, he worked on the cinematography of AMERICAN DREAM by Barbara Kopple and with Haskell Wexler. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He lives in Chicago, where he grew up.