Since the large-scale expansion of the Russo-Ukrainian war in February 2022, Russian citizens have become increasingly isolated from the Western world. Within their own country, conditions have grown more authoritarian, with dissenting political voices and independent media largely silenced.
Protecting the names and identities of its interviewees, this animated short documentary gives Russians a rare chance to speak with unguarded honesty about how the war has changed their lives, as well as how they view their homeland in its wake. These include a Moscow doctor who, while privately opposing the war, has chosen to focus on other things; a homemaker in the Urals who strongly supports Vladimir Putin and believes the West is tempting fate by challenging a nuclear power; and an art student in St Petersburg who must find oblique ways to express himself amid the crackdowns on free speech. What emerges is a complex portrait of life in seclusion, in which the only shared constant is the presence of war, existing in dramatically different ways in the minds of the interview participants.
