Rodnye (Close Relations)

Following Ukraine’s revolution in 2013, filmmaker Vitaly Mansky decides to travel throughout the region and visit his family. He talks on camera with family members in Ukraine, Crimea and Donetsk, hoping to gain a better understanding of the influence of the many political events on local people. Mansky takes the viewer along on a journey from May 2014 to May 2015. He gets all his family members – mother, grandfather and aunts – to speak out about the situation there. They discuss complex questions, like how important is it where you live or who you want to live with. All the while, global news events are playing out, such as the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Mansky’s personal journey reveals how the difficult relationship between Russia and Ukraine is also causing friction between his aunts. The longer Mansky travels around, the more tightly interwoven with political events his family’s history becomes – and, inevitably, the more it starts to affect him.