Lavrentiy Beria

As Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, primary schools across Russia’s hinterlands are transformed into recruitment stages for the war. Facing the ethical dilemma of working in a system defined by propaganda and violence, a brave teacher goes undercover to film what’s really happening in his own school.

This is a project that talks about the key figures in the leadership of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1953. Felix Dzerzhinsky, Kliment Voroshilov, Semyon Budyonny, Vyacheslav Molotov, Andrey Zhdanov, Victor Abakumov, Lavrenty Beria. Their names are known throughout the country today, but few people remember how they went down in history and what they did for their state. They were in the midst of civil confrontation and social upheaval, changing the course of history. Cities, streets and mountain peaks were named in their honor, monuments were erected to them, their victories were told in schools, but they could not know that after years their biographies would undergo careful editing, and all achievements would be forgotten.

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March 9th, 1953. A gray, sad day. Clouds float low over the Kremlin towers. A city that unrecognizably grew, prettier and matured - this Moscow froze in solemn grief. The country escorts its father and leader, Joseph Stalin.

The enigma of the personality cult is revealed in the grand spectacle of Stalin’s funeral. The film is based on unique archive footage, shot in the USSR on March 5 - 9, 1953, when the country mourned and buried Joseph Stalin.

The Katyn massacre, carried out by the Soviet NKVD in 1940, was only one of many unspeakable crimes committed by Stalin's ruthless executioners over three decades. The mass murder of thousands of Polish officers was part of a relentless purge, the secrets and details of which have only recently been partially revealed.

January 1953: On the eve of his death Stalin finds himself yet another imaginary enemy: Jewish doctors. He organizes the most violent anti-Semitic campaign ever launched in the USSR, by fabricating the "Doctors' Plot," whereby doctors are charged with conspiring to murder the highest dignitaries of the Soviet Regime. Still unknown and untold, this conspiracy underlines the climax of a political scheme successfully masterminded by Stalin to turn the Jews into the new enemies of the people. It reveals his extreme paranoia and his compulsion to manipulate those around him. The children and friends of the main victims recount for the first time their experience and their distress related to these nightmarish events.