Reviews

Valeriya Dudinskaya was 14 years old when she decided to become Valeriya Gai Germanika. She also considers it as the beginning of her artistic career. Zhanna, Vika, and Katya of Everyone Dies but Me were the same age when the school principal announced an upcoming school party - an ultimate event which would be a life-defining moment for girls. They prepared their best looks, planned on how to get alcohol and cigarettes, and most importantly - were desperate for boys' attention. And they did get all of that... Except for the fact that they pictured it a bit differently. Germanika's straightforward look into the Russian reality puts the viewer in an uncomfortable position. At first, we see an average post-Soviet setting - adolescence in Soviet-built apartments, neglected parks, garages, and families of middle or less-than-average income. That all, however, gets darker, as Germanika incorporates violence as a part of the daily life of a Russian teenager. Katya is thrown down to the floor by her father for wearing vulgar clothes. Zhanna makes a suicide attempt because of being scared of getting beaten up by her father for killing his fishes. Kids are fighting outside the school on a regular basis. So, why does Germanika puts such an accent on violence, both physical and moral? To answer this question, we may refer to the concept of negative identity as it can help us with the interpretation of Germanika's narrative. Negative identity refers to the identification that opposes any kind of societal expectations. In Everyone Dies but Me, the ultimate desire of girls to defy the status quo that the society assigns to them is a key element of the film. Their decisions reflect their will to prove everyone wrong: "It's you who is an excess. Moron", says Katya to her teacher. By doing so, they treat every other person - parents, peers, senior students - as an enemy. This hatred is the main cause of the violence we see in this film. Referring to Beumers and Lipovetsky, we see that the negative identification causes any kind of communication to be violent, since every Other is a potential enemy. As regards the technical part of the film, I have to mention that the camera work of Alisher Khamidkhodzhayev plays a crucial role in the viewer's perception of the film. Khamidkhodzhayev ensures that the viewer is involved in the film as much as possible. He holds the camera predominantly on the level of actors' eyes and in a close range, placing us on the same level with them and allowing us into their personal space. That is also one of the key components of Germanika's filmmaking - she is a peer to her heroines. With the help of camerawork, she is able to tell the story about the girls while being with them, as if she was a tailor that sews from within. Germanika's omnipresence in this film is what, I believe, critics in Cannes found interesting about her approach. Another remarkable point about Khamidkhodzhayev's work is that he picks his camera angles so that there is always a prolonged space, whether it is the school hall, playground, or an alley. And here, we are getting involved with the concept of liminal spaces in this film. When assessing girls' physical location, it is important to notice that they spend most of the time somewhere in between their homes and school. The stairs, the landings, the taxi cab are the places that are supposed to take you from point A to point B. The girls, of course, refuse to be in either of those - they run away from classes with the same enthusiasm as when they run away from their parents. Therefore, Germanika shows that this age is all about being transient - first, Katya, Zhanna, and Vika swear to be friends till the ends of their lives, and two days after we see them doing exactly the opposite. Speaking of Germanika's previous works, many critics mention that Everyone Dies but Me is reminiscent of Germanika's documentary The Girls. There, she depicts the lives of three real girls during their summer holidays. In both films, we see the usual urban setting, the young female characters, and their vulnerability toward the things that adolescence exposes them to - romantic relationships, alcohol, and body experiments. However, the key difference between these films is that Germanika keeps her distance in The Girls - we can only see what the characters allow us to. Zhanna, Vika, and Katya, on the contrary, are much closer to us. Germanika makes a great effort to share the most intimate of their experiences with us, as was discussed earlier. Summing up, Everyone Dies but Me is Germanika's detailed answer to the question of: "What does it mean to be a teenage girl in Russia?". She picks average characters, puts them into the usual Russian setting, and depicts the way they interact with the world surrounding them. It is also interesting that Germanika is known to be very compassionate about demonstrating the world through the eyes of young women. A perspective that she delivers successfully, and that is still so much needed in the male-dominated world of film.

On August 19th, 1991 a group of operators for "Lendokfilm" went out to the streets to shoot one of the most significant events in the newest Russian history. They were the eyes of common folks, the eyes that almost 30 years later let us see the story of August Putsch - the Soviet coup d'état attempt. The film is a chronicle of events in Leningrad starting with the crowd trying to figure out what is going on, protests, barricade construction, and ending with the declaration of the members of GKCHP as the traitors of the nation. This historic moment is often referred to as the death of Russian communism.

Sergei Loznitsa, a famous Ukrainian film director, made a successful attempt at demonstrating the actual chain of events four months after which the Soviet Union was no more. He does so by focusing the viewer's attention at the protesters, while carefully inserting pieces of information that allow us to construct our own version of Putsch.

The people that are depicted in the documentary are the main storytellers. Their appearance tells us a lot, young and old people wearing jeans, lush hair, brightly-colored jackets - expressing their readiness to live in a democratic country. Fair enough, this was the first real opportunity to speak up for political rights within 70 years. There is, however, some history attached to it. Prior to the Putsch, the USSR underwent a series of political reforms, known as Perestroika and Glasnost, that aimed liberalization, freedom of speech, and overall democratization under the country's first and last president Gorbachev's rule. His initiative faced a lot of critique and was often considered as a sign of weakness from the communist party. Consequently, 8 high-level communist officials have created the committee on the state of emergency (GKCHP) to overthrow Gorbachev.

Even though the crowd was exercising their democratic rights by gathering, protesting, and building barricades, it is important to mention that people were clearly supporting the current government, not the GKCHP. Seems pretty clear - nobody wants communism anymore. But did the people know what they are getting instead? Sitting here in 2020, knowing the actual outcome of the events, another question appears - even if there is democracy on the streets, is there democracy inside those buildings?

Speaking of the inside of those buildings, it's no secret that KGB was always famous for their ability to do things behind the curtain. "Volodya! Volodya!" - says an unknown voice to a rushing figure in front of Anatoliy Sobchak, the figure that strongly resembles the current president of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, a member of KGB back then. Volodya doesn't respond. Next scene we see them rushing out of there. In a blink of an eye. We can only guess about what happened in the building that Sobchak and the company entered, but the event that happened there has probably defined the nearest 30 years of the political life of the Russian Federation, as well as the name of the documentary. Loznitsa wants us to decide what kind of event do we want it to be on our own, but the fact is - it happened.

When assessing the cinematographic decisions, it is important to notice that there are two key camera plans - a detailed, close view, and a wide view. It allows the viewer to see both the scale of crowd gatherings and assess closely the appearance of separate individuals that constitute this crowd. The editing of the documentary also plays a significant part in connecting the scenes so they would make sense. As we see, the scenes follow the chronology and are separated with a long black screen with Swan Lake playing in the background. Even though it may seem like Loznitsa's participation in this movie is minimal, the scenes are cut masterfully by a Cannes festival invitee.

In Mikhail Yampolskiy's article The Country Where Ressentiment Won, Yampolskiy states that the defactualization in Russia has reached the stage of destruction of the government and society. In other words, the resentment of Russian people, that is based on feeling helpless and incapable of even the smallest change in their own country, is now a driving force of the deconstruction of the state. This process, however, began right there, in the Event. "Let's call them lies. Lies. About. That. Time." - said Loznitsa in his interview one year before the release of the film. Lies about that time - a good summary of Loznitsa's documentary career, he is indeed famous for being able to bring up the lies to the screen. Lies that look so small and innocent there, somewhere on his tapes, while getting bigger and bigger as we look at them closer and trying to fill the puzzle of today's reality with them. This is probably how it works with lies. Those sweet little lies that always favor the present, but never the future.