In the early 2000s I arrived at graduate film school in Moscow thinking I would be surrounded by brooding lovers of avant garde Soviet cinema, devotees of the evasive spiritual allegories of Tarkovsky or the high-art agitprop of Sergey Eisenstein. To my surprise, most of my mature co-students—many of whom were from outside Moscow, as well as from the Baltics, the Caucusus, and Ukraine—were more interested in imitating the bittersweet psychological dramas of the late Soviet era. The films they loved were quietly anti-Soviet in that they shunned great power narratives in preference for private stories about love and friendship. The heroes of these films were often humble, tired men looking for the sparks of values—friendship, loyalty, love—in a somewhat cynical, cold world.
2019 Presidential Election
OP-ED
Peter Pomerantsev: Zelenskiy, the post-Soviet man
Ukrainian comedian and presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy reacts after the announcement of the first exit poll results in the second round of Ukraine's presidential election at his campaign headquarters in Kyiv on April 21, 2019.
