On 26th of Martch Askold Kurov, a provocative Russian documentary maker, will teach a class at the Festival. One of the main ideas which he will try to explain during the meeting is how important it is that the events filmed by the documentary maker convert into personal feelings.

With this kind of attitude Askold is now approaching his new film about Oleg Sentsov, letting the subject’s story reach his innermost self. Extracts from the new film will be shown at the Festival. The director told us how his work on the film is going, how Orthodox Christianity is replacing communism, and how documentary cinema is becoming the antidote to propaganda.

You are making a film about Oleg Sentsov at the moment. What kind of film will it be?

As soon as Oleg was brought to Moscow, I started to go to the first trials. Then I understood that I could only stand by and wave my hand from a distance. But I wanted to help him somehow, so I started to film what was happening around him. The main character of this film is his sister Natalya. She is the coordinator of all the actions in support of Oleg.

It was very important for my work on this film that I knew Oleg personally. Because if a documentary maker is not involved in the story in any way, it would be very difficult to experience it from this distance. I met Oleg back in 2011. He messaged me on Facebook that he had watched my first documentary. He just shared his impressions, and we have been in touch ever since. Then we saw each other at the Moscow premiere of The Gamer. But we kept communicating via messages.

How do you choose topics for your films?

Usually I use the topics which concern me personally, which I have strong feelings about. Actually, documentary cinema is like a kind of therapy for me. I make films to solve some problem, to understand something.

Is it patriotic to press the sore points of your country?

Yes, it is very important. Apart from personal therapy, documentaries are also attempts to change a situation which you consider to be wrong. The problem is not to shove the troubles of the society at the audience, but to diagnose those problems which do not let us live better. Sometimes people say that the only purpose of such films is to denigrate society or the state. But it is not true. Rather, it is harmful to keep silent about problematic facts about your society or your state. It seems that this is one of the worst things left over from our hypocritical Soviet past. Back then they thought that if you do not talk about the problem, it is as if it does not exist.

Opposition protests and LGBT teenagers whom you talked about in your films are not problematic for official Russia. They fall out of the officially approved value system of your country. But when you were filming Leninland, about the museum to the Soviet leader, it turned out that the museum and the memory of Lenin had also fallen out of contemporary Russia’s value system. The film clearly demonstrates that the museum only survives thanks to the enthusiasts who keep the memory of the leader alive for their miserable wages. Taking this into account, a question arises; What, then, has not fallen out of the value system of contemporary official Russia?

Patriotism, the victory in World War II, Gagarin’s flight… Among other things, Orthodox Christianity, which has now taken the place of the Communist ideology. I mean, the Orthodox Church has become a kind of Ministry of Ideology. The Lenin museum is a symbol of this ideological synthesis. A church is being erected across the street from it, and its guides back Lenin’s ideas with quotes from the Bible.

In Ukraine, Lenin statues keep being torn down at the moment. The number of Lenin statues torn down during the years of independence is approaching four thousand. What about Lenin statues in Russia?

Nothing, of course. But I perfectly understand that the symbol of the Lenin statue being torn down is a very important milestone for people. In Russia, we have not experienced this yet, and I think we still have a long way to go. Actually, Leninland is about the idea that we are stuck at the junction of two eras. We still have the Soviet system untouched. Now it is being decorated in new ways, but it is the foundation of the system that has to be changed. Party functionaries in contemporary Russia still think the same way as in Soviet times. The propaganda which fills Russian television now still uses Soviet rhetoric. They have not even invented anything new. That is why my compatriots have a horrible feeling that they have simply gone back in time.

How do the official authorities react to your films?

I think the authorities have more important things to think about. My films do not have a chance to be shown on the official TV channels. After one showing of my Children 404 film, some patriotic/Orthodox organization initiated prosecutor`s investigation. Moreover, Orthodox activists tried to interrupt the showing of this film in Vladivostok.

Has it ever happened that, after a showing of your film which brings up a certain social problem, anyone tried to start solving this problem?

Not directly. But my films have changed some people’s opinions on certain problems. For example, we received many comments about Children 404. Most important for me was the comments from parents who saw the problem in a different light after having watched the film. They started to understand that homophobia is hardly different from racism or nationalism. But the most important comment to this film came from one boy with a non-traditional sexual orientation, who said that after he watched this film he stopped thinking of suicide.

You probably often have an urge to drop the camera, intervene in the situation and help your subjects. Has it ever happened that you put your camera aside and turned from an observer into a participant?

I have not yet been in such critical situations which would require me to drop the camera and intervene. But in such cases you have to decide for yourself whether you are a documentary maker and observer, or a participant. Because, at least for me, it is impossible to combine these two roles.

What do you do apart from documentaries? It does not look like you can live off making this kind of films in Russia.

To make a living, I do freelance tasks — I film something, I edit films...

When I watched your film Go Away Winter before Euromaidan, it seemed very original to me. It showed protest activity from within in a very interesting way. But after the Euromaidan this film is no longer interesting, because the events presented in it are much smaller in scale than what happened in the center of Kyiv.

It is, of course, difficult to compare the concentration of events and the results of the rallies in Moscow and in Kyiv.

What are the recent trends in documentary cinema?

In Russia, documentary cinema is gaining new importance. Today, it can serve as an antidote to the stream of propaganda in the media. You can say whatever you want in the news and lie, but documentary shots easily destroy all these propaganda constructs. Documentary film can be the evidence of reality which is rarely talked about. Even if imaginary propagandist films are made really professionally, the viewer will recognize the lies in them if she puts them next to the real documentaries.

Documentary cinema is attracting more and more interest today, and many people have started to make this kind of film. I know that in Ukraine there is a real boom of documentaries spreading these days.

Conversation with Anton Filatov