The script is based on the investigation records and the stories of relatives of a little-known Ukrainian anarchist Ivan Krupsky, who is the great-grandfather of the film’s director. The documentary dramatisations are dedicated to the paradoxical periods of the protagonist’s life: his leadership in a rebel unit, participation in the civil war of the early 1920s, his hiding from persecution under the guise of a Soviet police officer, his job as a factory construction worker. The stories about situations in the past are reproduced using the actions of contemporary characters: contemporary anarchists, officers of the New Police, students and workers. The filming took place at the locations of particular historical events, in Poltava, Hadiach, Kharkiv and Bohodukhiv.
Mykola Ridnyi was born in 1985 in Kharkiv. He graduated from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Fine Arts. He makes films, photo series and installations. His works have been presented at the Venice Biennale for modern art, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the Center for Contemporary Art and Media in Karlsruhe, the Academy of Arts of the World in Cologne, and at the Museums of Contemporary Art in Leipzig and Warsaw.
Selected: Ordinary Places (2015), Fortress (2014), Dima (2013)
