PUTIN'S WITNESSES
O.V. Russian subtitle in Spanish and English
Here is a film that is as uncomfortable for Putin as it is unreleasable in his country. With acuity and fine irony, Vitaly Mansky (from self-exile) infiltrates the elusive personality of the Russian leader through his gestures and his words, to which the director had access (at that time for propagandist ends) during his campaign and first year of leadership. Official visits, dinners and lunches with Yeltsin and Gorbachov, intimate conversations, former collaborators who have fallen into disgrace and visits to the gym with Putin in a film about how it is necessary for everything to change in order for everything to remain the same.
Direction: Vitaly Mansky
Editing: Gunta Ikere Music: Karlis Auzans
Sound: Anrijs Krenbergs
Production: Natalia Manskaya, Gabriela Bussmann, Filip Remunda, Vít Klusák
Production Company: Studio Vertov, Golden Egg Production, Hypermarket Film
Vitaly Mansky
Born in 1963 in Lvov, he studied cinema in Moscow. He is one of the most important documentary directors in Russia. His first work was released in 1989, and since then he has made more than 30 films which have been shown and have won awards at festivals such as Cannes, San Sebastian, Rotterdam, Berlin, Moscow, Oberhausen, Locarno, Toronto, Montreal and Turin, among others, and have been seen on various European television channels. His most recent films are Under the Sun (2015), which won awards at Jihlava, Tallin and Vilnius, and Putin’s Witnesses, Best Documentary at Karlovy Vary in 2018. In 1996 he worked on an archive project for home movies shot in the former Soviet Union, and he has been an important figure in the diffusion of documentaries on Russian television. Since 2006 he has run the Artdokfest in Latvia, where he lives.