Anatoliy Ulyanov

As an immigrant from a raceless country, I’m troubled by the American obsession with the color of one’s skin. In 2018 I’ve asked my friends to recall the very first time they became aware of having a race.

Los Angeles MacArthur Park has a notorious reputation. Located right on a cross of different gang territories, it became associated with drugs, violence, and its diverse homeless population: undocumented immigrants, abandoned veterans, transgenders, people who lost their job, and people with disabilities who can’t afford healthcare. For a course of 3 months, I visited MacArthur Park filming those who live there. Many of those people came to the US with a dream to find heaven. And LA indeed looks like one. My goal was to show this dramatic contrast between heaven and its tragedy.

The documentary tragicomedy tells the story of a conservative girl Maryana, 23, who has just emigrated to the United States from Ukraine. Alone in this new and alien world, she meets Anya, 27. Anya works as a dancer in nightclubs for immigrants, and agrees to be Maryana's guide to a strange looking glass world at the crossroads of the United States and the USSR. Mariana does not yet realize that this journey will change her forever.

Sergiy Astakhov is a modern Russia, converted by patriotism and Orthodoxy. Here, against the background of the eternal Olivier salad in front of the TV, the "largest" shopping malls are being built and laws are being passed against the "propaganda of homosexuality." Living on the outskirts of Moscow, in a maze of faceless gray skyscrapers, Astakhov absorbs this caricatured "Russian world" and expresses it by shooting very sincere videos for his YouTube channel.

Timely injection of the revolutionary spirit from Fred Hampton (Black Panthers Party). Based on the footage from "The Murder of Fred Hampton" (1971) by Howard Alk, Mike Gray, John Mason