235 000 000

Uldis Brauns’ contribution to 50 years of October Revolution in majestic black and white is visually stunning across the full expanse of the big screen and yet purified of propaganda. A formal and thematic highpoint of the Riga School of documentary filmmaking, which Brauns co-founded alongside 235 000 000 screenwriter Herz Frank, among others. Conceived as a dialectical echo-response to Dziga Vertov’s A SIXTH PART OF THE WORLD (1926), this masterpiece of the “Baltic New Wave” captivates with its poetic composition reflecting both the great modernisms of the Sputnik era and small subjectivisms. A collective portrait of the Soviet people, the 235 million referred to in the title, but one also haunted by critical questions lurking in the background.