Directed by Vitaly Mansky • Documentary • 2016 • 114 minutes
Following Ukraine’s revolution in 2013, filmmaker Vitaly Mansky decides to travel throughout the region and visit his family. He talks on camera with family members in Ukraine, Crimea and Donetsk, hoping to gain a better understanding of the influence of the many political events on local people. Mansky takes the viewer along on a journey from May 2014 to May 2015. He gets all his family members – mother, grandfather and aunts – to speak out about the situation there. They discuss complex questions, like how important is it where you live or who you want to live with. All the while, global news events are playing out, such as the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. In CLOSE RELATIONS, Mansky’s personal journey reveals how the difficult relationship between Russia and Ukraine is also causing friction between his aunts. The longer Mansky travels around, the more tightly interwoven with political events his family’s history becomes – and, inevitably, the more it starts to affect him. —IDFA
Directed by Jessica Gorter • Documentary • 2017 • 90 minutes
The Red Soul lays bare the Russian psyche of today and shows a world full of contradictions. In a country where hardly any family escaped the hunger, fear and violence resulting from Stalin’s reign of terror, no one has ever been convi...
Directed by Vitaly Mansky • Documentary • 2018 • 102 minutes
On December 31, 1999, Russian president Boris Yeltsin went on live television just before midnight. He announced he was stepping down, and his chosen successor, Vladimir Putin, would take over as acting president. Putin promised a pres...
Directed by Tania Rakhmanova • Documentary • 2005 • 52 minutes
In August 1999, Vladimir V. Putin, head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the KGB, was appointed Prime Minister. On December 31st of that year, Boris Yeltsin announced that Putin would succeed him as President ...
