The Samantha Smith Project

In 1983, the ten-year-old American Samantha Smith wrote a letter to the Soviet Prime Minister Yuri Andropov. She was afraid Russia would drop a nuclear bomb on the United States. When she unexpectedly received an answer and was invited to come to Russia, not only her life changed, but that of many Americans and Russians did as well, as the two countries briefly warmed up to one other. Director Irene Lusztig travelled to Moscow herself in 1989 as part of an exchange programme that was initiated in memory of Samantha Smith. Fifteen years later, she spends eight months in the Russian capital, where she attempts to visit her former exchange programme friends. But the Russians are indifferent to the past and only bother about their day-to-day worries. Through fragments from newscasts, found footage of children taking ballet lessons and other historical images, tells the story of a young diplomat in the 1980s. At the same time, it challenges its audience to re-examine current political trends (in particular patterns in diplomacy and propaganda vis-à-vis perceived foreign threats), suggesting the enormous importance of maintaining an analytical eye to the historical past in order to make sense of the present.