Mikhail Fishman

A talk show

How Vladimir Putin has used his experience as a spy to create and lead modern Russia: arrogance, anger and betrayal; military interventions, cyber-attacks and political assassinations.

The 23rd June 2023. The Russo-Ukrainian war rages on. In an unexpected turn of events, the Wagner Group chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, orders his men to seize Russia's southern city of Rostov-on-Don. The opening salvo of a mutiny against the Kremlin.

All day long the TV shows an ice-hole. Ice-holes are the theme of the day, a winter tradition that unites believers and sportsmen, stars and walruses, the president and the unemployed. In the centre of the news reports are the topics of Baptism, fishing and the criminal chronicle. The president and a pike, the artist and the crit- ics, the oligarch and the law enforcement team – they all meet at an ice- hole in search of solutions for their problems. The jobless Muscovite, with bad habits, dives down an ice-hole for a wife, just like Sadko. The fairy- tale plots intertwine with documentary context, and it is no longer clear where reality ends. Remember Nietzsche: if you long gaze into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.

A documentary about Boris Nemtsov, a prominent figure of Russian political opposition and an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. Nemtsov was murdered in Moscow in February of 2015.

The film tells about the former journalist of the Kommersant and Vedomosti newspapers, adviser to the Roscosmos state corporation Ivan Safronov. On July 7, 2020, Safronov was arrested, charged with high treason and placed in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center. So far, several months after Ivan's arrest, neither he, nor the defense, nor the public have been presented with a single piece of evidence of the journalist's guilt.