(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
While Eric Bergkraut puts the audience in Khodorkovsky's place, we are put in the young Russian documentary director Zosya Rodkevich's place in the film My friend Boris Nemtsov (2015) – both as a filmmaker and as the object of the woman's happy politician's desires and flirtation.
The film is framed by the assault on Nemtsov the 27. February 2015 on the bridge in front of the Kremlin. Through the naive questions and reflections of a raised Russian girl on her father's shoulders, we are introduced to the circumstances surrounding Nemtsov's death during the memorial march over the fateful bridge. Finally, we attend the funeral, with Nemtsov in the open coffin and mourning family, friends and supporters around. The contrast is great from Nemtsov's body to the vital figure we have come to know through Rodkevich's close portrait.
We follow Rodkevich's camera lens from when she was introduced to Nemtsov at the train station just before a train journey. The director writes in the introduction to the film that she was then 22 years and worked as a journalist, and applied for an advertised assignment to make a film about Nemtsov. Her prejudice about a narcissistic bourgeois politician was put to shame. A clearly captivated and silly Nemtsov invites her to share the coupe with him alone – and the flirtation that begins carries the film.
Alone with Nemtsov in the train compartment, Rodkevich films him as he mutters asleep, with general views on the democracy struggle and life. At Nemtsov's home in his spartan apartment in Moscow, his wife complains that they have lived there for eight years and that their bed is broken. Nemtsov stands in just his underpants and defends himself that oppositionists should not own much, for the sake of personal freedom. During a workout at a health club, he tells young Rodkevich about his four children with three different mothers, that he has accepted and supported them all, and about how happy he is with women. We also follow Nemtsov on the town of Yaroslavl, who ends up with a smoking mistress beside the bed with a sleeping Nemtsov. Through Rodkevich's film we come close to Nemtsov from the very perspective of the many women who became the subject of his desires.
In one scene one part way through the film, where the young, female filmmaker is alone with Nemtsov in an elevator, he steals in for a kiss despite her gentle protests, and we as the audience are left with the camera pressed to Nemtsov's chest. What appears as sexual harassment on Nemtsov's part, in Rodkevich's Russian portrayal, becomes an expression of the human and charming nature of the Russian opposition politician. Nemtsov is reminiscent of the Russian national poet Aleksander Pushkin, who was also a freedom-loving oppositionist and a notorious skirt hunter.
We follow politician Nemtsov around Russia: during the large-scale anti-war demonstration in Moscow on September 21 led by Nemtsov, and during the trial of blogger and politician Alexei Navalny. We get an insight into Nemtsov's packed program with interviews, handing out leaflets at the stand and small public meetings with pensioners ahead of the elections to the regional assembly in Yaroslavl in 2013. However, Rodkevich's focus is primarily on Nemtsov's charismatic personality, flirting and friendship with blogger Navalny. , PR consultant and politician Ilya Yashin and the rest of the youthful environment around him. A TV interview on the street in Yaroslav with Nemtsov is interrupted by Yashin. He believes Nemtsov is too clear in his criticism of the regime and the persecution of critics of the regime for it to come through the censorship. It may seem that this limitation to the politically most inflamed also applies to Rodchenko's presentation and angle.
However, Nemtsov's patriotism emerges: When the invitation to Thatcher's funeral clashes with the trial of Navalny, Nemtsov chooses the latter, joking that it is a test of his patriotism. In a television interview Rodkevich films from the studio, Nemtsov explains that his dream is that his children will never want to leave Russia.
Nemtsov points out in an interview in Siberia that life has improved under Putin, but at the same time also more disgusting.
Nemtsov points out in an interview in Siberia that life has improved under Putin, but at the same time also more disgusting. Most people who support Putin emphasize the former – while the middle class in the big cities who react and oppose are concerned with the latter, Nemtsov analyzes.
As Khodorkovsky undergoes a religious conversion in captivity and finally crawls to the cross, Nemtsov laughs witty and flirtatious through Rodkevich's portrait of him as a sovereign Pushkin of the rebuilt Russian tsarism in the 21st century. Where Khodorkovsky finally gives in to pressure and enters into an agreement with Putin, Nemtsov does not allow himself to be compromised. We know the result.
See also the film about Khodorkovsky
