Igor Ivankov finds a bag of old film reels in his grandparents' garage. Too curious to throw them away, he has them developed and proceeds to dive into the filmic past of his grandfather Leonid Burlaka, who was educated at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow and later employed at the Odesa Film Studio. While Igor is busy discovering his grandfather's oeuvre by means of the comprehensive archive, the latter's memory is increasingly fading due to dementia. Between moments of clarity and moments of memory loss, in which Leonid sees himself confronted with his disease, the elderly man's films and photographs render his family history and everyday life in the Soviet Union, from the 1960s until its collapse, vibrantly visible.
Igor Ivankov finds a bag of old film reels in his grandparents' garage. Too curious to throw them away, he has them developed and proceeds to dive into the filmic past of his grandfather Leonid Burlaka, who was educated at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow and later employed at the Odesa Film Studio. While Igor is busy discovering his grandfather's oeuvre by means of the comprehensive archive, the latter's memory is increasingly fading due to dementia. Between moments of clarity and moments of memory loss, in which Leonid sees himself confronted with his disease, the elderly man's films and photographs render his family history and everyday life in the Soviet Union, from the 1960s until its collapse, vibrantly visible.
