The Mysterious Wall

The Mysterious Wall (Russian: Таинственная стена, romanized: Tainstvennaya stena) is a 1967 Soviet science fiction film directed by Irina Povolotskaya and Mikhail Sadkovich. In the taiga, a strange phenomenon appears: a dome-shaped wall of fog roughly two kilometers in diameter that vanishes and reappears periodically, thought to carry a powerful electrostatic charge. This wall attracts scientists who discover it causes viewers to see hallucinations of the past. A research station sits under the dome, where scientist Lomov (Lev Krugly) has worked for three months. He believes the wall is a messenger from an alien civilization and, despite failed attempts, keeps trying to make contact. Using a borrowed military radar, he transmits various images to the wall and studies its responses, which trigger hallucinations from the radar operators’ past lives while burning out the equipment. Authorities send Lomov’s friend Andrey (Irakli Uchaneyshvili) to replace him, suspecting Lomov is overworked and imagining the wall as an intelligent alien. Andrey is joined by Lomov’s fiancée Lena (Tatyana Lavrova), and along the way they meet Senior Sergeant Valya (Andrei Mironov), assigned to prepare a broken radar for dismantling. The group discusses the wall, repairs the radar, experiments with it, and hypothesizes that the hallucinations come from Martians studying Earth life. The climax occurs when Lena, during a mirage, realizes contact can be made by entering the wall. She attempts it but fails as the wall closes before her watching comrades. The expedition returns to Moscow for a press conference, where journalists and scientists question them about the wall. Soviet scientists then begin planning a new, larger expedition to study it in detail.