Sergey Erzhenkov

Mikhail Abramenko came to work in the police in 1998. After serving 21 years, he resigned with the rank of lieutenant colonel from the post of commander of a mounted police battalion. Now he is a tour manager of the punk group "Pornofilms".

"If the end is the salvation of the soul, then the end justifies the means." Following the will of his spiritual father, in Soviet times he swore allegiance to the atheists, in the 90s he welcomed money changers in the church, and in the 2000s he turned the church into an ideological department serving the authorities, and all in order to achieve the main goal - the creation of a Russian Vatican, powerful and independent of Caesar's corporation. Like Vladimir Putin, he came as a Westerner and a modernist, and will leave as a guardian and reactionary. A film about the life and ministry of the sixteenth Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill.

In the Apocalypse of John, there is such a thing as warmth. Being angry with the Laodicean church, the Lord reproaches: “I know your deeds; you are neither cold nor hot. ” Cold, that is, a sinner who denies or arguing with God, is not hopeless, he can come to salvation through repentance, but a warm, spiritually smoldering person who does not believe in ritual following his heart - such a person is against God. Punk is always a choice of two extremes. Or drink till you drop - or become an invete sober person. Hot or cold. But never warm. The heroes of the film are three generations of Russian punks - from “Automatic Satisfiers” to “Pornofilm”.

A film about Pavel Kushnir — a musician who refused to compromise, in art or in conscience. A “great little man,” as his friends describe him, Pavel played sublime music for two elderly women in an empty community hall with the same devotion he would have brought to Carnegie Hall. He wrote extraordinary novels and dared to protest, fully aware of the consequences. In 2024, Pavel Kushnir died in a prison in Birobidzhan.

Alexander Sysoev was a successful businessman in the dashing 90s. In 1999, he decided to overthrow the current government, first in Vyshny Volochok, and then in the country. In order to take possession of the weapon, Alexander wanted to seize the local police department. On the night of April 9-10, 1999 — the eve of Orthodox Easter — Sysoev staged a shooting at the police department of the city of Vyshny Volochek. As a result of this attack, three police officers were killed. Sysoev was detained, and after an investigation in 2000, the court found him insane and sent him to compulsory psychiatric treatment. 15 years later, in 2015, Sysoev was released. Sergey Yerzhenkov found Alexander and went with him to Vyshny Volochek.

He is an influential bishop, a future patriarch, a possible confessor of Putin, a member of the Athos and Izborsk clubs. He is friends with Sechin and Mikhalkov, and lobbies for Vasilyeva's candidacy. The Minister of Culture, Medinsky, waits for him in the corridor for several hours. He is an ideologist of extreme church fundamentalism and a master of hardware games. He is Tikhon Shevkunov, the main character of the documentary film "The Confessor"by Sergey Yerzhenkov and Vladislav Pushkarev.

With his arrest in early June 2019, investigative journalist Ivan Golunov became a symbol in Russia of resistance to police misconduct. His case was perhaps the first time in the country’s modern history that civil society forced the law-enforcement system to retreat. Over the five difficult days it took to free Ivan, no one was closer to him, his family, and Meduza’s editorial staff than documentary filmmaker Sergey Erzhenkov and the camera crew who assisted him. In this new film from the “Black Flag,” we bring you the Golunov case through the eyes of those who were at the epicenter of these events.