Marina Safronova

Fifteen-year-old Sashka, a combat fencer, is about to join the Olympic team. Unexpectedly, the girl realizes that besides sports there is another life, alluring and exciting, where the laurels of a champion are no longer so significant. But outside the path, her saber and well-aimed blow are powerless.

Repurposing found archival material, this work analyses the discursive eclecticism and political eschatology of contemporary Russia, which has been used as the new ideological justification for the military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 in a so-called "denazification" operation—a mirror projection of the country's internal process of leaning towards fascism.