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“Russian documentary filmmaker Ksenia Okhapkina’s essay portrait looks at the strict order that governs life in a small industrial city in Russia. With her talent for visual composition and perceptiveness regarding local events, she puts together an audiovisual collage of seemingly minor details that enable us to observe a society bound by the regime and political power. Scenes of young girls learning about discipline at ballet school or adolescent boys training for the army are eloquent examples of citizen indoctrination, but the filmmaker avoids psychologizing the participants. Instead she portrays the dangerous ideology without excessive words or narration, thus perfectly capturing its furtive omnipresence and inconspicuousness”. Read more >

…Ksenia Okhapkina takes a visually impressive and ultimately cinematic approach to the themes of indoctrination, ideology, an oppressive system and an imperceptible lack of freedom. Read more >

„That today’s surreal political order in Russia is replicated at the microcosmic level of small-town Russia is hardly surprising. But it is rarely so poetically and economically sketched out as in Immortal“. Read more >