In her documentary experiment, Yulia Lokshina addresses the issue of how the institution of school is used by the Russian state to justify its aggressive expansionist actions. The story revolves around a young Russian teacher who speaks out against the war in class shortly after the invasion of Ukraine. A pupil secretly records her statement and denounces her. She flees to Germany and begins to work as a teacher again. Together with her Berlin class, she reconstructs her own case to understand why this betrayal happened and what consequences censorship and persecution have for the individual, but also for communities. In addition to observations of the class, the film uses archive material, found footage, documentary scenes, and 3D animations to make the situation in Russia, characterised by fear and surveillance, tangible and comprehensible here as well. – DOK Leipzig
Yulia Lokshina
DE 2025
Golden Dove, DOK Leipzig
82 min | German, English, Russian, Kirghiz
Yulia Lokshina
Born in 1986 in Moscow, Russia. She studied documentary film directing at the HFF Munich. Whilst working at the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft in Bonn, she developed audiovisual projects at the intersection of film and science.
Films
Run, don’t walk 2014 | Days of Youth 2018 | Regeln am Band, bei hoher Geschwindigkeit 2020 | Active Vocabulary 2025 | Im Umkreis des Paradieses 2026
R+B+P+D: Yulia Lokshina | DOP: Nina Wesemann | E: Yulia Lokshina, Maya Klar | A: Felix Klee | S: Jakob Gross | SD: Alejandro Weyler