Sergej Loznitsa's "Imperium" wins the Film Festival in London. They praise Shumowska's film.

Sergieja Łoźnica's "Imperium" wins the Film Festival in London. Praise for Szumowska's Unoriented is worth remembering that the international career of Paweł Pawlikowski's "Ida" began at this most important British film festival. Besides, Pawlikowski also arrived this year with his new film, although he was not competing in the competition. The BFI London Film Festival, as its full name suggests, is famous for its talent in selecting gems of world cinema. One of the recent ones was the Danish film "Na rauszu" by Thomas Vinterberg - similarly to "Ida" - the Oscar winner for Best International Feature Film. "Imperium" is an absolutely unique, 176-minute so-called documentary montage that does not possess a classically understood story or even a narrator from off-screen. The film is entirely about everyday life in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1970s, and most interestingly - seen through the eyes of... Italian filmmakers. What do we know about Sergieja Łoźnica's film? Łoźnica's almost three-hour film - presented earlier outside the competition at the festival in Venice - immediately delighted critics from all over the world. Sergiej Łoźnica obtained the footage shot on 16mm film, which had been in Italian film laboratories for more than half a century. Their story is amazing. In the years 1970-1973, the Italian Communist Party (then the most influential communist party in Western Europe) organized an official film expedition to the Soviet Union. The Kremlin gave them blessing and official passes, and above all, access to all corners of the USSR that was unattainable for people from the West. They wanted to shoot a powerful, multi-part documentary material that would show Western Europe the "splendor and diversity of the Soviet utopia". Most importantly - because they were looking at it through a "Western eye" - the camera avoided the clumsy, Soviet propaganda of success. Instead, with respect and curiosity, it recorded the everyday life of ordinary people and their surroundings. After returning to Italy with 60 hours of recorded material, only a few short segments were broadcast on television. The rest of the gigantic recording of the lives of Soviet citizens over more than half a century remained in the Roman archive. It was only Łoźnica who managed to access this material and ensured its restoration. The material that the Italian communists shot to "show the power and unity of the USSR" was reassembled by the Ukrainian director in such a way that - avoiding his own commentary - it would expose the oppressive nature and falsehood of that world. He did not add even a minute of contemporary material; we see only what the Italian filmmakers recorded 55 years earlier. It begins in the powerful, monumental center of power, in Moscow - we see Red Square and the department store GUM full of people. Then the camera moves east: through provincial Russian towns (Suzdal, Vladimir), deep Siberia (where it records the indigenous cultures of reindeer and camel herders), to the republics of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan) and the Baltic and Leningrad. The key theme that Łoźnica brings to light with the help of the montage is a deep paradox. On one hand, it shows the omnipresent Soviet symbols, the monuments to Lenin and the attempts to impose a single, unified identity of the "Soviet man" on everyone. On the other hand, it presents its complete opposite: ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity. The camera shows how people in distant republics live according to their own, unchanging rhythm, cultivating ancient traditions, language, and local customs that put a silent resistance against the "center" in Moscow. The title "Imperium" refers to the Latin understanding of this word. Łoźnica shows the USSR not as a unified state, but as an artificial creation forcibly tied into one organism - extremely different nations and worlds against their will "united", doomed from the beginning to later disintegration. Sergieja Łoźnica - controversial and anti-Putin The figure of Sergieja Łoźnica - a Ukrainian director of Belarusian origin - deserves a closer look by viewers less familiar with cinema. From the beginning of his career, Łoźnica has emphasized discontent and his own, inimitable cinematic language. He made his first, famous short documentaries (such as the cult "Blockade" from 2005) in the Documentary Film Studio in St. Petersburg. He quickly attracted the attention of Western film studios and settled in Berlin at the beginning of this century. He therefore had the luxury and opportunity to make films in co-production, which he took advantage of. His fictional debut "My Happiness" (2010) is a dark and uncompromising deconstruction of contemporary Russian province. In turn, "Tender" (2017) is a brutal, almost Kafkaesque allegory of contemporary Russia as a state-prison. None of these overtly anti-Putin productions left illusions about his worldview. Łoźnica also shot outstanding films in defense of Ukrainian identity, such as the documentary "Maidan" (2014) or the most famous fictional "Donbas" (2018). From the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, he has loudly condemned the Russian aggression, and at festivals (such as in Cannes in 2025), he directly called the Putin governments a "return to Stalinism". Nevertheless, in 2022, there was a public conflict with Ukrainian filmmakers and he was excluded from the Ukrainian Film Academy. The reason was the radical difference of opinion on the issue of boycotting Russian culture. Łoźnica did not accept the exclusion and boycott of Russian artists, to which Ukrainian creators (as well as Europeans) called for. He argued that culture should not be subject to collective responsibility. He appealed not to throw the propaganda of the Kremlin and independent Russian artists (such as Kirill Sieriebriennikov), who openly condemned the war and had to leave their country, into one basket. For the Ukrainian industry, which in that dramatic moment fought for Russia's isolation on the international stage, Łoźnica's stance was considered an unacceptable compromise and led to his removal from the Academy membership. The director himself responded with an open letter in which he called this decision a manifestation of censorship and nationalism, emphasizing that he has condemned Russia's aggression unequivocally for years but refuses to divide people "according to a passport". The Extraordinary Wife of Dostoyevsky Among the only 10 titles selected by the organizers of the London Film Festival for the Main Competition, there was, among others, the Polish-British film by Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert "The Idiot(s)". As usual with Szumowska's cinema, the film polarized viewers and critics, although the latter seemed to like it more. The title naturally refers to the novel of the Russian writer. It is actually a somewhat crazy story of his wife, who saved Fyodor Dostoevsky's life. As the first woman in the country, she founded her own publishing house, becoming a pioneer in the history of national literature. In the main roles were: the star "White Lotus" Aimee Lou Wood (allegedly excellent) and Johnny Flynn ("Gangster Zone"). Renowned American film magazines praise the production for its subversive nature. "The Hollywood Reporter" rated the film as "full of a special sense of humor in homage to the underappreciated wife of the writer". Meanwhile, the British "Screen Daily" called it "a bold portrait of the Dostoyevskys and an unconventional and eccentric look at their turbulent relationship". All reviews emphasize the mocking tone and "exaggerated ornaments". And even if the reviews from users on film portals (IMDb, Letterboxd) are less enthusiastic, controversies are indeed part of the reception of unconventional works.