All is quiet
in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois:
old graves, melancholy air.
Vera Obolensky is one of
few regular visitors here.
Seventy-three years old,
she's a descendant of Russian aristocrats
who fled to the West in 1917,
to escape the communists.
She visits her parents' grave
every couple weeks.
The people who are buried here
are part of our country's history.
This cemetery isn't just like
any other – it feels like ours.
Obolensky's grandparents fled
via Turkey and Hungary.
Her parents – Serge and Irene –
came to Paris in the 1930s.
Here, they'd just met.
This is our family,
I was ten at the time.
We’re aristocrats;
I'm a member of the
thirty-fourth generation.
The Obolenskys have been around
since at least the tenth century.
We always held
important state positions and
were part of the aristocracy.
They're not the only
noteworthy people buried here.
Jean-Pierre Lamotte is
an expert on the cemetery's history.
Come on, I'll show you a grave
you may not know of – belonging to
Yusupov, who killed
influential preacher Grigori Rasputin.
He was married to
the niece of Tsar Nicolas II.
Many members of Russia's
former elite found their final
resting places here.
Only well-known figures –
such as Tarkovsky, the famous filmmaker –
high-ranking military, painters,
and writers were laid here.
Some 150,000 Russians
emigrated to France around that time.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
the cemetery has grown even quieter.
Russian tourists often used to
come here, and when there were
no more descendants to do it,
Russia paid to maintain the graves –
this has been suspended.
A French association maintains
around six hundred graves.
We have a moral responsibility.
Without its peace, the cemetery
is no longer a spiritual place.
Every grave should
be a place of prayer.
Of all the prominent figures, however,
one grave attracts particular attention:
This is Nureyev.
In a spectacular move,
Soviet ballet dancer and choreographer
Rudolf Nureyev
defected to the West in 1961.
For a long time,
I used to spot an elderly lady sneaking
around his grave –
then I found out that she
slept on it at night.
No, that's unbelievable!
Who do you think she was?
Wardrobe assistant?
The old cemetery of
Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois:
With so many stories to tell
– and a rich history.