Victor Fainberg. Madly in Dissent

The poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya (1936-2013) gained wide popularity first of all as a participant in the dissident movement and one of those legendary eight who on August 25, 1968 went to the Red Square to protest against the invasion of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia, having paid for this several years of imprisonment. She was often called the heroine. She objected: "I'm not a heroine, I'm just an ordinary person." The authors of the film shot Gorbanevskaya for several years, asking questions that worried her as a poet, forced them to go to the square, and how her fate developed after forced emigration from the USSR.

Two families from Russia and the US are preparing to adopt a child from an orphanage in Russia. A Russian family brings home two children and experiences the first difficulties and joys of a new life. And on the path of an American family to adopt a 5-year-old girl with disabilities, there is a new law signed by President Putin that prohibits Americans from adopting Russian children. Will little Polina's dream of her own family come true?

On August 25, 1968, 7 people gathered in Lobnya Square in Moscow protesting against the entry of troops of the Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia. For 5 minutes of freedom in the main square of the Soviet Union, they paid years of prisons, links and camps. The authors of the film meet three participants of the legendary "demonstration of seven" and show young fighters for human rights in modern Russia. Who are they - the dissenters of our time - and what are they willing to sacrifice for the sake of living in a democratic society?