STALIN’S WIFE
unrated, 173 mins.

‘Stalin’s Wife” contains absolutely no reliable information about Stalin’s wife, and it’s more than happy to tell you that. This documentary from cult figure Slava Tsukerman (“Liquid Sky”) looks as though it was thrown together in less than a week. Plain and ugly to look at, the film is content to present, over and over again, unsubstantiated theories and arguments on its title subject, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, then contradict them, then contradict the contradictions.

Over a cheesy and grating synthesizer-laden score, Tim Smallwood narrates as though he’s reading his script for the first time, often presenting forehead slapping disclaimers like “There is a theory that is not supported by documents.” Oh? In these parts we call that Page Six. The only concrete fact anyone involved in the picture seems to agree on is that Stalingrad really was named after Stalin.

When it is possible to read the titles of the talking-head interviewees (too often these distinctions are whisked by before one can properly make them out) you’ll find either dubious acknowledgments or sloppy misspellings. Two times, Artyom Sergeyev is referred to as Stalin’s “adapted” son, while other authorities are credited as “an author of a book on Ms. Alliluyeva” without the actual title of the book being named.

At one point “Stalin’s Wife” suggests Stalin may even have been Alilluyeva’s biological father. But maybe he wasn’t. But maybe he was! This may be one of the only documentaries you’ll ever see where you know less coming out than you did going in.

THE TUNNEL
unrated, 150 mins.

Rather than be used as a tool of communist propaganda, East German swimming champion Harry Melchoir (Heino Ferch) escapes his homeland just as the Berlin Wall is going up. While his friends Matthis (Sebastian Koch) and Fred (Felix Eitner) join him, he leaves his beloved sister behind, though he promises to return for her. Once on the other side, the three come up with the idea to build a tunnel underneath the wall, so that they may engineer the escape of Harry’s sister and countless others who wish to flee.

“The Tunnel” is funny in parts (as when a film company gets wind of the plan and negotiates to underwrite it in exchange for footage), but, at two-and-a-half hours, it is overlong and lacks urgency. Director Roland Suso Richter does not document particularly well what is objectionable about life on the east side of the Wall. If we did not know any better, we would agree with one character who suggests staying behind because at least here he has friends and a job.