‘E.T.,’ ‘Coming Home’ to Screen in Moscow in Film Exchange

Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” which set the world record for box office grosses when it was released in 1982, will have its premiere showing in the Soviet Union July 27 as part of a film exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. Spielberg won’t attend the Moscow screening, but Kathleen Kennedy, president of his Amblin Entertainment, will.

Also going to Moscow under the American-Soviet Film Initiative will be “Coming Home.” Star Jon Voight, who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a disabled Vietnam veteran in that 1979 film, will attend a screening and discussion of the movie at Moscow’s Filmmaker’s Union on July 28.

While high-ranking Soviet officials are attending those screenings in Moscow, members of Congress in Washington will be viewing two Soviet films at the Library of Congress July 27 and 28.

The two Soviet films are “Commissar,” the story of a woman commissar walking the line between revolutionary and mother, and “Cold Summer of ‘53,” a controversial film set in the Soviet Union just before Stalin’s death. Directors and stars of both Soviet films will attend the screenings.

The exchange grew out of the American-Soviet Film Initiative, which has the support of both governments.