Despite the falling snow (Despite the Falling Snow) is a 2016 British spy film directed by Shamim Sarif from a screenplay by Shamim Sarif. The film was released in the United Kingdom on 15 April 2016.
The film is set in the Soviet Union after Stalin's rule. A young Russian woman named Katya (Rebecca Ferguson) lost her parents during the Stalinist repressions. Although she pretends to be a communist, she hates the regime and spies for the Americans. Her friend Misha (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who is a spy, also assists her in gathering information about the Americans.
As part of her assignment, she meets the young and handsome Sasha, who is from the Kremlin elite. Katya marries Sasha (Sam Reed), with the goal of spying on him, but things do not go according to plan. Soon Katya falls in love with Sasha and plans to go to the USA with him. However, before she leaves for the USA, Katya mysteriously disappears. Sasha remains in America alone and after living there for 30 years, he becomes a successful businessman.
Many years later, he visits post-communist Russia to try to figure out what caused Katya's disappearance. He and his niece Lauren work together to search for clues. They meet Misha, who has become an adult alcoholic and tells them what really happened to Katya...
The film is an adaptation of the 2004 novel of the same name by writer Shamim Sarif, in which the events unfold in two different time periods - one story takes place in Moscow in the 1950s during the Cold War, and the other tells a story from 1992, when Moscow and London are in the period after the collapse of the USSR.
