Russian Lessons

When war breaks out in early August 2008 between Russia and Georgia, the film makers Andrei Nekrasov and Olga Konskaya head for the front from two sides. Nekrasov approaches the front line from the ‘European’ South and Konskaya from the ‘Russian’ North. On the way, they send each other their pictures. In this way, Nekrasov is able to show the refugees he meets in the South pictures of their destroyed villages in the North. But this journey is only the start of Russian Lessons. The directors of this personal investigation into the war juxtapose their visual material with the official version of the Russian government, a version that has been unquestioningly adopted by Western media. In addition, they put the war in the context of post-Soviet Russia, with a central role for the forgotten genocide during the battle in 1993 between Georgia and the still controversial region of Abkhazia.
The film was the directing debut of Olga Konskaya, the partner and cooperator of Andrei Nekrasov, who also acted in his feaure debut Lubov and Other Nightmares (2001). She passed away shortly after Russian Lessons was finished.

• 

•