Mariya Muskevich

It's 2018. Russia has just elected its President. A new, old President. Nothing will change during the next six years, and, at first glance, you just have to accept it. This is the way people think, whilst heroes feel otherwise. Russia has many heroes. This film is about them.

Russian Federation, May 6, 2012. On the eve of the ceremony of inauguration of Vladimir Putin, elected for a third term, the police brutally repressed a march of protest over the lack of freedom existing in the nation. Some people believed that this demonstration would be the beginning of a peaceful revolution, but it was the day when silence and fear won the game. Realize what happens when a person has too much power in his hands.

Colored hair, earrings in ears, bright clothes - an image that is very different from the Kazakh standard of masculinity. This is how the main characters of this, members of the Kazakhstani group Ninety One, look like. Many will not find anything unusual in the image of the musicians, however, the group’s popularity among Kazakh-speaking teenagers caused a great indignation of part of society, which led to street protests, disruptions of concerts and pressure from the authorities. The appearance of Ninety One revealed a whole layer of social and cultural conflicts within Kazakhstani society - between urban and rural culture, between traditionalism and globalization, between the vertical of power and personal freedom.

Moscow protests in the summer of 2019, caused by the inadmissibility of independent candidates for elections to the Moscow City Duma, were brutally dispersed by riot police and the Russian Guard. Peaceful protest actions on July 27 and August 3, which brought thousands of people outraged by the injustice to the central streets of Moscow, inspired and made many more courageous, despite the arrests and a large criminal trial called the "Moscow case". The persecution has mobilized new forces of solidarity among professional human rights defenders and grassroots activists, especially young ones. Supporting political prisoners has become a fashionable pastime. How long?