2015 documentary film by Vitaly Mansky

迎接千禧年的除夕，时任俄罗斯总统叶利钦突然宣布辞职，普京时代开始。《幸福北韩》（40 届）导演维德利明斯奇，当时获邀为准备竞逐总统大选的普京拍摄纪录片，正好见证了政治强人在此关键时刻如何巩固个人权力。当年未曾公开的片段，近距离追踪即将大权在握的普京，还有戈巴卓夫和叶利钦现身镜头前，而当时在普京身边的同路人，不少后来都成为反对派，个中其实有迹可寻。获捷克卡罗维法利电影节最佳纪录片奖。

Director Vitaly Manskiy sets off on the trail of the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline to find out what it’s like for ordinary people living in its vicinity. This visually refined road movie, eloquently illustrating the absurd banality of modern Russia, is also an unsettling portrait of a gas line on which most of Europe is reliant.

Changes that reverberated throughout the world wrought by one man. A film summing-up the life of a man who changed the world in the 20th century. Gorbachev's short time in power was marked by the collapse of this empire. He was the architect of Glasnost and Perestroika, policies that gave the citizens of the Soviet Union - what Ronald Reagan called "the Evil Empire" - a chance to be free. He tore down the Berlin Wall. But at the same time, under his rule, the Chernobyl nuclear facility exploded and its destruction was concealed. Citizens demanding independence in the Baltic states died. Soldiers wielding shovels brutally suppressed protesters in Tbilisi. And Soviet tanks menaced, and killed, peaceful demonstrators in Baku. The Soviet empire collapsed under him - and he is condemned by his own people. With this burden of the past, this lonely old man is living the last days of his life in an empty house in the suburbs near Moscow.

“I became a Russian citizen simply because I happened to live in Moscow when the Soviet Union broke apart,” says the celebrated Ukrainian documentarist. A few decades later his family in Ukraine face the dramatic consequences of further turbulent change, and their fresh experience of the revolution shows us that the media presentation of the country’s east-west dichotomy is deeply flawed.

A time-lapse documentary shot by Ukrainian DoP and volunteer paramedic Yevhen Titarenko. It depicts the life of medical staff near the front line in 2014 and 2022. Titarenko followed a unit of paramedics around and managed to get a peek into their private lives.

As armed conflict flares up at the edges of Europe, the commemoration of the Second World War is used to prepare people for renewed conflict. In Azerbaijan, the recent expulsion of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh is presented as a national success. And in Russia, with much flag-waving, bombastic language and tank parades, the invasion of Ukraine is equated with the victory over fascism in 1945.
Meanwhile, the Polish army displays its latest acquisitions, and the residents of Kyiv—between air-raid sirens—view the destroyed tanks that their own army has captured from the Russians. It’s only in Berlin that the public pays little attention to the Soviet memorial in Tiergarten Park, close to the once-defeated Reichstag, and dances as if there’s no tomorrow at an open-air techno party.
Filmmaker Vitaly Mansky was born in Ukraine, made critical documentaries in Russia in the 1990s and lives in Latvia due to his political stance since 2014. By showing how war commemorations vary across Europe, without commentary, he exposes a fundamental and potentially dangerous difference in mentality.

随着四季的更迭——春天、夏天、秋天、冬天……在乌克兰西部的利沃夫，战争从未停止。这座城市在试图维持正常生活的同时，也时刻处于紧急状态之中。导演曼斯基用一年的时间，细致地跟拍了这个社会在哀悼仪式和日常习俗中的生命周期，揭示了在一个被战争阴影笼罩的地方，死亡如何无情地融入了每一天的生活。

War doesn’t start and end in battlefields; it originates and is buried in peaceful cities. This film delves into the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine, not by focusing on violence, shelling, or the victims, but by reflecting on the military vehicles that either enter or have long been embedded in the lives and minds of people across various countries.