In Search of a Lost Paradise (2015)

• 82%
• 2015
• Documentary
• Evgeny Tsymbal

This film tells the story of Russian artist Valentina Kropivnitskaya and her husband, the artist Oskar Rabin. A story about great talent and great love. One that shows what it is like to live in a totalitarian regime, while still trying to retain one's personal and artistic freedom. The story of people who have created the very notion of nonconformist art, later called The Second Russian Avant-garde. In 1974, the couple organized a prohibited open-air art exhibition, which the KGB smashed using bulldozers. The following day the event was publicized worldwide. Shortly thereafter, the couple was exiled from the USSR and were stripped of their citizenship. However, this historical event forced the Soviets to change their stance regarding art. The director, Evgeny Tsymbal, one of the most internationally acclaimed contemporary Russian documentary filmmaker (awards from FIPRESSI, British Film Institute etc.), recounts the story of an artist who was true to her talent and one who never gave into the pressures of life.