RODNYE (CLOSE RELATIONS)

Synopsis

Russian citizen and Soviet-born Ukrainian native Vitaly Mansky crisscrosses Ukraine to explore country’s society after the Maidan revolution as mirrored within his own large Ukrainian family. They live scattered all across the country: in Lviv, Odessa, the separatist area in Donbass, and Sevastopol on Crimea. The film is looking for reasons of the conflict after which citizens of a single country found themselves on different sides of the barricades. The main narrative takes place in the here and now. But below the main narrative there is a strong historical undercurrent. This undercurrent will carry information about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict’s deep roots in centuries of close ties between the two countries.

Director Biography

Russian director Vitaly Mansky has been making documentaries since the 1990s, but gained popularity with his 2015 documentary Under the Sun. He is also the founder of the Russian Open Documentary Film Festival, ArtDoc Fest.