My Perestroika

My Perestroika follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times; from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia.

фильм по-русски с английскими субтитрами (In Russian with English subtitles)

Together, these childhood classmates paint a complex picture of the dreams and disillusionment of those raised behind the Iron Curtain.

Robin Hessman’s intimate and lovingly crafted documentary about the last generation of Soviet children brought up behind the Iron Curtain. Since premiering at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, My Perestroika has screened at some of the world’s top documentary festivals, including Full Frame, where it won the Filmmaker Award, Silverdocs, where it won the Special Jury Award, and the prestigious New Directors/New Films, a collaboration between the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art.

When the USSR broke apart in 1991, a generation of young people faced a new realm of possibilities. An intimate epic about the extraordinary lives of this last Soviet generation, Robin Hessman’s feature documentary debut tells the stories of five Moscow schoolmates who were brought up behind the Iron Curtain, witnessed the joy and confusion of glasnost, and reached adulthood right as the world changed around them. Through candid first-person testimony, revealing verité footage, and vintage home movies, Hessman, who spent many years living in Moscow, reveals a Russia rarely ever seen on film, where people are frank about their lives and forthcoming about their country. Engaging, funny, and positively inspiring, in My Perestroika politics is personal, honesty  overshadows ideology, and history progresses one day, one life at a time.