ARTDOCFEST/RIGA
Film director, producer and creator the most influential Russian documentary festivals Vitaly Mansky brings the goods to Riga for the blunt reason that this year he might as well not be able to screen them in Moscow. Politically so. Even more so – because both the film-makers themselves and the subjects of their films can basically be turned into outlaws when entering Russia. Thus Riga during the festival becomes the hotspot for the most innovative independent documentary films made by Russian-speaking authors all over the world. The prime focus of ARTDOCFEST has always been discussion. The Riga IFF team is honoured to provide this necessary freedom in times as both difficult and exciting as these.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russia experienced a drug epidemic. Zhanna and Aleksey are the survivors; they are in their thirties, living in a small Saint Petersburg apartment with Aleksey’s mother and trying to control their use of heroin.
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Zenya Tsoy is an impression artist who impersonates the grandees of Russian show business, becoming, for example, Filip Kirkorov or the singer Lolita. He is thirty-three, and for many years he has been living with another man, the world’s most charming bus driver.
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During the twentieth century, television became not just a part of our culture and a means of entertainment (they say people spend 10 years of their lives in front of a TV), but also one of the most powerful weapons of the Cold War propaganda.
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A revolution changes the social and political landscape; but first it transforms the actual one. No other European capital city centre had recently looked the way Kiev’s Maidan did a short while ago, resembling a medieval carnival or a futuristic fantasy.
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Donetsk’s airport, named after Sergei Prokofiev, was renovated in 2012, but destroyed two years later in the war between Ukrainian forces and Donetsk separatists. The atrocious battle for the airport – a more symbolic, than strategic, aim – has been shown through the eyes of both sides.
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This film is dedicated to the heroes fallen for Ukraine. A simple, authentic story presents the world-view of the volunteer fighters, participating in the tragic Battle of Ilovaisk in August 2014. Without a voice-over or any other embellishments, this is the film that allows one to sense what war is really like. The author of the film, Ruslan Ganuschak, is a fighter of the controversial AZOV volunteer battalion and a war reporter.
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Abkhazia is one of those “frozen” conflict regions of the former Soviet Union. Its people are proud of their historical heritage and will not let such nuisances like dilapidated houses and regular power shortages to lessen their love of life.
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Twenty years after the unsuccessful attempt to establish independence from Russia, the life in Chechnya’s capital Grozny still verges on the fragile border between war and peace. Archaic traditions and political repression contrast with modern skyscrapers and the longing for freedom.
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