The Event

Leningrad, 1991.Thousands pour into the streets and public squares of the former Imperial capital as news of a coup d’etat spreads: The reform-minded Soviet leader Gorbachev has been detained, and may be dead. State media is silenced; in its place there is only a repeated broadcast of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Stunned and uncertain, the wandering masses soon coalesce into a body of protest—on strike, building barricades and waving banners and makeshift signs demanding freedom. In the midst of this maelstrom, a crew from the storied Leningrad Documentary Film Studio fans out into the streets, capturing the mayhem and excitement first hand. It is from this footage that director Sergey Loznitsa has expertly crafted The Event, a look back at the defining historical moment that signaled the end of the Soviet Union. Like the director’s masterful prior work Maidan (SFIFF 2015), this film documents a popular uprising—with its attendant chaos, fervor, and hope—while meditating upon such a gathering’s very impermanence. On one stage, Leningrad’s charismatic mayor Anatoly Sobchak—briefly sighted with his protégé, Vladimir Putin—issues exhortations to the clamoring crowds; on another, the Russian tricolor vies for supremacy over the hammer and sickle. —Paul Meyers