Olya's Love

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.

At the peak of Perestroika, in 1987, in the village of Gorki, where Lenin spent his last years, after a long construction, the last and most grandiose museum of the Leader was opened. Soon after the opening, the ideology changed, and the flow of pilgrims gradually dried up. Despite this, the museum still works and the management is looking for ways to attract visitors. Faithful to the Lenin keepers of the museum as they can resist the onset of commercialization. The film tells about the modern life of this amazing museum-reserve and its employees.

The demonstrators on the streets of Moscow in July 2019 want just one thing: fair elections. Despite their peaceful protest, 2,700 activists are arrested and hundreds are injured. The active camera places the viewer at the heart of the demonstrations, among the pushing and shoving of the chanting crowds. “You should be protecting us!” shouts a young woman at a soldier, and two big men come and take her away.

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?