"East/West" ventures into a time (post WWII) when the Iron Curtain shrouded Stalin's Soviet Union and a curtain of suspicion and distrust shrouded every soviet life. The film follows a French family of three as the patriarch returns to his Russian homeland where he and his family are held prisoners of conscience by communism. The film focuses on the characters, their silent suffering and yearning for freedom while living in a state of constant paranoia as it tears husband from wife, mother from son, and heroism emerges from the most unlikely places. "East/West" is an entertaining watch for all and, though fictional, offers a sense of what the Cold War was about.