Factual film mavens DocHouse are poised to take over Rich Mix in Shoreditch this Saturday March 3 with their Putin’s Progress event, comprising four screenings and two talks which seek to illuminate life in contemporary Russia as the country goes to the polls.
Vitali Mansky’s 2001 doc Putin: The Leap Year opens the schedule, explaining how ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin came to be President. The timeline then winds forward a decade with Khodorkovsky (also released nationwide today), tracing the rise and fall of a billionaire oligarch turned Siberian gulag prisoner, and the UK premiere of Our Newspaper, which follows a rural journalist’s struggle to uphold freedom of speech at his independent publication.
The latter pair’s respective directors, Cyril Tuschi and Eline Flipse, will form an expert panel alongside The Economist‘s international editor and former Moscow Bureau Chief Edward Lucas, Oxford University Professor of Criminology Federico Varese (author of an acclaimed tome on the Russian mafia) and Emmy-winning filmmaker Paul Mitchell, who helmed the recent BBC series Putin, Russia And The West.
The programme concludes with an advance preview of Lise Birk Pedersen’s festival favourite Putin’s Kiss, which profiles the pro-Putin youth movement Nashi.
For times and tickets check the DocHouse website.
