GORBACHOV. HEAVEN
Gorbachev. Heaven is a documentary film about changes that reverberated throughout the world wrought by one man. A film summing-up the life of a man who changed the world in the 20th century. He was the architect of Glasnost and Perestroika, policies that gave the citizens of the Soviet Union a chance to be free. He tore down the Berlin Wall. But at the same time, under his rule, the Chernobyl nuclear facility exploded and its destruction was concealed. Citizens demanding independence in the Baltic states died. Soldiers wielding shovels brutally suppressed protesters in Tbilisi. And Soviet tanks killed peaceful demonstrators in Baku. The Soviet empire collapsed under him – and he is condemned by his own people. With this burden of the past, this lonely old man is living the last days of his life in an empty house in the suburbs near Moscow.
Vitaly Mansky was born in 1963 in Lvov. In the year 1982, he entered the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). His first work in the world of cinematography appeared in 1989, and since that time he has shot more than 30 films and presented at more than 400 international film festivals. He was awarded more than 50 awards and prizes in Russia and abroad. Mansky has been working on a project that aims at the activation of amateur private video files that were shot in the times of the former USSR from the 1930s until the 1990s.
IDFA Award for Best Directing, Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival 2020
Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2021
Latvian National Film Festival 2021
Millennium Docs Against Gravity 2021
Russian Guild of Film Critics 2022
GORBACHEV. HEAVEN (doc.)
Director: Vitaliy Manskiy
Country: Letonija, Češka
Year: 2020.
Runtime: 100’
Language: Russian
Cast: Mikhail Gorbachev, Chulpan Khamatova, Evgeniy Mironov
Production: Vertov SIA, Hypermarket Film, ARTE
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PROGRAMME: KINOKAUCH PRESENTS