War doesn’t start and end in battlefields; it originates and is buried in peaceful cities. This film delves into the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine, not by focusing on violence, shelling, or the victims, but by reflecting on the military vehicles that either enter or have long been embedded in the lives and minds of people across various countries.

While Ukraine is fighting, how does it affect the rear? For a year and a half, Vitaly Mansky has portrayed his hometown of Lviv, where everyone’s existence is shaped by the Russian missiles’ flight time to their targets.

As armed conflict flares up at the edges of Europe, the commemoration of the Second World War is used to prepare people for renewed conflict. In Azerbaijan, the recent expulsion of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh is presented as a national success. And in Russia, with much flag-waving, bombastic language and tank parades, the invasion of Ukraine is equated with the victory over fascism in 1945.
Meanwhile, the Polish army displays its latest acquisitions, and the residents of Kyiv—between air-raid sirens—view the destroyed tanks that their own army has captured from the Russians. It’s only in Berlin that the public pays little attention to the Soviet memorial in Tiergarten Park, close to the once-defeated Reichstag, and dances as if there’s no tomorrow at an open-air techno party.
Filmmaker Vitaly Mansky was born in Ukraine, made critical documentaries in Russia in the 1990s and lives in Latvia due to his political stance since 2014. By showing how war commemorations vary across Europe, without commentary, he exposes a fundamental and potentially dangerous difference in mentality.

A time-lapse documentary shot by Ukrainian DoP and volunteer paramedic Yevhen Titarenko. It depicts the life of medical staff near the front line in 2014 and 2022. Titarenko followed a unit of paramedics around and managed to get a peek into their private lives.

“I became a Russian citizen simply because I happened to live in Moscow when the Soviet Union broke apart,” says the celebrated Ukrainian documentarist. A few decades later his family in Ukraine face the dramatic consequences of further turbulent change, and their fresh experience of the revolution shows us that the media presentation of the country’s east-west dichotomy is deeply flawed.

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. Gorbachev's short time in power was marked by the collapse of this empire. He was the architect of Glasnost and Perestroika, policies that gave the citizens of the Soviet Union - what Ronald Reagan called "the Evil Empire" - 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 menaced, and 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.

Director Vitaly Manskiy sets off on the trail of the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline to find out what it’s like for ordinary people living in its vicinity. This visually refined road movie, eloquently illustrating the absurd banality of modern Russia, is also an unsettling portrait of a gas line on which most of Europe is reliant.

Russian Federation, December 31, 1999. After President Boris Yeltsin's unexpected resignation, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin becomes acting president of the country. From that day and for a year, Vitaly Mansky's camera documented Putin's rise to power. The story of a privileged witness. The harsh explanation of the reason why politics is the art of possibility of achieving the best with the support of many, but also of giving the worst in return.

2015 documentary film by Vitaly Mansky