Leninland

Putin had been preparing his country for the big war long before it started. Since 2012, a series of repressive laws were passed, labelling everyone who publicly disagreed with the official narrative as „foreign agent“. In these circumstances, a group of independent Russian media and activists are trying to resist and continue their work. Right after the invasion their work becomes virtually impossible. Shot during one decisive year, before and after the invasion, the new film by fearless filmmaker Askold Kurov (The Trial - The State of Russia vs. Oleg Sentsov) portrays the last defenders of democracy in Russia and gives a glimpse of hope for another future.

This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.

In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin passed a bill forbidding the “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors.” LGBT youth, now defenseless against insults and intimidation under this “gay propaganda” law, are considered sick, sinful and abnormal. Psychologists, teachers and even parents can be fined or imprisoned for supporting them. Forty-five Russian teens and tweens share their stories through anonymous interviews and video diaries. They detail their humiliations and discriminations, as well as their courageous stands against bullies. Their testimonies are collected online as the Children 404 project, named after the common “error 404 - page not found” web message. The support group’s founder struggles within the system to bring public attention and empathy to the victims of this government-endorsed hate, while activist Pasha decides he must leave his homeland altogether if he hopes to find a boyfriend and lead a normal life. Has a new Stone Age arrived in Russia?

August 2015, a courtroom in Rostov-on-Don. A man is peering through the bars of his cage, his eyes reveal that his nerves are about to snap. Today he will be handed down a sentence to which he must submit: 20 years’ imprisonment in Siberia for terrorism. The man is Oleg Sentsov, a film director and Maidan activist born in Simferopol in the Ukraine. He is charged with leading an anti-Russian terrorist movement and having planned attacks on bridges, power lines and a monument of Lenin. Sentsov defends himself, courageously and without flinching. He responds to the verdict with an emphatic denial of his crimes and instead accuses the accusers themselves ...

Ten director graduates from Marina Razbezhkina’s School of Documentary Film and Documentary Theatre lived with a camera for two months in order to chronicle the last “Russian winter” and its popular uprising against Vladimir Putin’s presidential run. People, faces, conversations, protests, failures and triumphs come together to chronicle the campaign.

'Novaya Gazeta'. One of the first independent editions of post-Soviet Russia. One of the last remaining today.

A provincial Russian family killed off by suicide, murder and manslaughter and a boy who asks about guilt and forgiveness in the midst of all this squalor. Shockingly great.

This film is a unique historical document, a cast of the tragedy. This film is about the disaster that happened to Russia and filmed in real time. Chronicle of a diving country.