Filmed in 1978 but banned until 1987, The Lonely Voice of Man was Sokurov’s first full-length feature, based on two works by suppressed Soviet experimental author Andrej Platonov. The story, set in the 1920s, concerns Mikita—a solitary young man who has been deeply affected by the civil war—and the torturous course of his relationship his middle-class wife as the two struggle to adapt to an unrecognizable new society and the disintegration of their moral world. Sudden intrusions of archival footage that portrays scenes of daily life in those early post-revolutionary years combine with discordant montage, nonrealist use of color, varying film speeds, and a shockingly atonal, expressionist sound track—all characteristic of Sokurov’s unique personal style.