MY PERESTROIKA with Filmmaker Robin Hessman

Robin Hessman, director of the acclaimed Sundance documentary MY PERESTROIKA, an intimate portrait of the last generation of Soviet children brought up behind the Iron Curtain, introduces a special screening of her film and takes questions after the movie. MY PERESTROIKA opens at the Coolidge April 8.

MY PERESTROIKA tells the stories of five ordinary Russians, from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia. Together, these five Muscovite classmates paint a complex picture of the hopes, dreams and disillusionment of those raised behind the Iron Curtain. Through candid first-person testimony, revealing verité footage, and vintage home movies, Hessman, who spent many years living in Moscow, reveals a Russia rarely seen on film, where people speak frankly about their lives and country. Called “enthralling” and “astoundingly timely” by the New York Times, in MY PERESTROIKA, politics is personal, honesty overshadows ideology, and history progresses one day and one life at a time.

Since premiering at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, My Perestroika has screened at some of the world’s top documentary festivals, including Full Frame, where it won the Filmmaker Award, Silverdocs, where it won the Special Jury Award, and the prestigious New Directors/New Films, a collaboration between the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art.

This film is being shown in Russian with English subtitles. For more information and advance tickets, visit www.coolidge.org. Tickets are also available at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline.