Ciudadano X

The characters of Fetisov and Burakov were both real people who investigated the actual Chikatilo killings, yet their ranks and positions were changed in the movie. Historically, Major Mikhail Fetisov was sent from Moscow in order to investigate the killings (in the film he is already in Rostov as a Colonel heading the militia) while Victor Burakov was a civilian forensic expert (in the film he is a Police Lieutenant) assigned by Fetisov to head the investigation. There was no Central Committee comprised of Communist Party and KGB men above the two (this was a plot device created for the film to show Soviet bureaucratic methods) and the main reason why the case took so long was that the investigators interviewed over 150,000 people trying to narrow down who the killer could be. The mistaken release of Chikatilo, and the botched blood-semen test, was accurate as it occurred in the investigation.

The film spans 12 years, yet Lt. Viktor Burakov's children don't age.

Epilogue:  "The mistake in blood and semen analysis that allowed Andrei Chikatilo to be released in 1984 has never been adequately explained.  Soviet Russia's head forensics expert has since asserted that she had discovered a rare new phenomenon--a man with a blood type of one kind, and a semen type of another.  Her colleagues around the world scoff at the idea.  Chikatilo led detectives to the graves of three undiscovered victims, proving conclusively that he was their murderer, and bringing the final body count to 52 dead.   Thirty-five of the victims were children under the age of 17.  Andrei Chikatilo was convicted of all 52 murders."

The 1995 UK video release was cut by 37 secs by the BBFC to reduce stabbings during the murder scenes.

Featured in Siskel & Ebert & the Movies: Roommates/Muriel's Wedding/Hideaway/The Good Old Boys/Citizen X (1995)