Maidan

In MAIDAN, Sergei Loznitsa assembles footage of the civil unrest that broke out on Kiev's Maidan in the winter of 2013/14 into a powerful contemporary document. Emerging from a peaceful protest march, the riots are eruptive evidence of the long-running Ukrainian revolution. With the intention of overthrowing Ukraine's ruling President Viktor Yanukovych, protesters gathered on the Maidan. But when they clash with the police - or rather, the police clash with them - street battles ensue and violence takes over. Loznitsa fits individual sequences of the course of the protest into a strictly ordered form, while consistently remaining at the central scene of the events, the Kiev Maidan. Creepingly, a haunting picture emerges, namely that of national redefinition.