Maidan

In Maidan, the camera remains mostly still. Very long shots capture people singing, making sandwiches and sleeping during what at times seems to be a carnival. But this is no carnival. An invisible announcer warns of snipers. Riot police in protective gear, with shields, helmets and visors lowered, move in to attack. Sergei Loznitsa’s film is not a standard journalistic report about civil riots in Kiev’s Maidan square. There are no talking heads and no voiceover, only the occasional intertitle to act as a timeline for the history erupting onscreen. Loznitsa (director of Festival favorites My Joy and In the Fog) structures his narrative solely through a montage that appears very simple at first glance, but one that grows expansive as the film builds into an epic. There is not a single close-up. This is not a film about leaders or heroes. But from this motley plethora of faces emerges a composite portrait of those who came to Maidan. —Mikhail Lemkhin