Close Relations

NEW RELEASE
Close Relations (Rodnye)

September 22–October 1, 2017
New York Premiere
U.S. Theatrical Premiere

In this follow-up to his award-winning documentary Under the Sun, filmmaker Vitaly Mansky examines Ukrainian society amidst the 2014 national election, a period rife with political chaos and growing uncertainty over national identity and integration. As both a Russian citizen and native Ukrainian, Mansky deftly underscores personal and political complexities as he visits with relatives living in Lvov, Odessa, the Crimean peninsula, and the Donbass region, and in the process discovers a wide and disorienting spectrum of outlooks and affiliations, including his own sense of ongoing exile and unease. Close Relations is at once an intimate family portrait and a graceful journalistic endeavor, a movie of the intense present that illuminates a place caught between a troubled past and an anxious future.

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“A film steeped in somber poetry and occasional black humor”—Stephen Dalton, The Hollywood Reporter

“An intriguing, painful study” —Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian