Michael Apted’s The Long Way Home is a revealing, rollicking portrait of Soviet underground rock legend Boris Grebenshchikov—an artist who, in the early and optimistic days of Glasnost, became the first of his scene to record in the West. At the time, Grebenshchikov could hardly believe the doors opening in front of him, or that collaboration might place him alongside names like Dave Stewart, Annie Lennox, Chrissie Hynde, and Ray Cooper.
Following its UK broadcast and a Sundance premiere, the film was released to critical acclaim, then largely slipped from view for the next three decades. By 1988, Apted was already widely recognised as a major director across both fiction and nonfiction, with films including Coal Miner’s Daughter and Gorillas in the Mist, alongside documentary landmarks such as the Up series and Bring on the Night, his concert film chronicling the making of Sting’s first solo album. His rare ability to draw people into candour powers The Long Way Home, shaping it into a complex study of an artist stepping into a moment of unimaginable freedom—making new music with new musicians—while also facing the personal cost of that leap. Members of his longtime band, Aquarium, felt abandoned, and when he returned home, longtime Russian fans were uncertain about his English-language songs as he performed them on familiar stages.
Now, thanks to the film’s producer Steven Lawrence, The Long Way Home: Remastered and Expanded (2026) is set for a second life in a newly remastered edition. Lawrence has also worked with the film’s editor, Susanne Rostock, to create a new epilogue tracing Grebenshchikov’s path after the release of his US album Radio Silence—including his life in exile and his outspoken criticism of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. The epilogue also partially fulfils Apted’s own ambition to make a sequel, a project he hoped to complete before he died in 2021. (Courtesy of MoMA)
Boris Grebenshchikov in Michael Apted’s The Long Way Home: Remastered and Expanded gets a TVOD Release in the US/ Canada and the UK on October 20th.
Dave Stewart and Boris Grebenshchikov (Credit: Yerosha Productions). Images (Yerosha Productions) provided courtesy of EG PR
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