IT WAS IN MAY

The framework is documentary, the core is fiction. In the beginning – footage from the battle for the Reichstag, injured horses riderless in the ruins of Berlin; in the end – street life in the metropolises of the world, summery and mundane, interspersed however with photos of the naked, threatened and starving. Four Soviet soldiers and their lieutenant learn that gas chambers were also part of the Nazi regime here six days after the capitulation. They literally grasp around for truths, including the truth of their taciturn German host (“war kaputt”) or the others – Jews, communists. Khutsiev translates epic history into everyday experience with eerie realism 25 years after war’s end.