Twenty years after the collapse of the USSR, there is still a state in Europe where a bronze statue of Lenin looks down on the streets from his column, where the good old Soviet times are nostalgically remembered and where it is strictly forbidden to take photographs at railway stations. Welcome to the dark, open-air museum of communism; welcome to the unrecognised Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic. Using the stories of several characters, this poetic documentary by young Czech filmmakers Klára Tasovská and Lukáš Kokeš describes daily life in the picturesque backdrop of the Transdniestrian (non-)state. Standing at the head of this unrecognised republic is Igor Smirnov, a tragicomic figure who looks like something straight out of the 1980s. He has built a Moscow satellite out of the territory on the right bank of the Dniester River. Weapons, drugs and human organs flow through it into Europe. At the same time, everything is controlled by the secret police and managed by mafia structures of power. Will a new presidential election offer a chance for change? This film has been successfully presented at foreign festivals such as Denmark’s CPH:DOX. (One World 2013)
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