Requiem for a dream: The Last Relic

RUSSIA / The absurdity of life in Yekaterinburg and the clash between those longing for imperial greatness and a small group of dissidents standing against Putin's impending invasion of Ukraine. Marianna Kaat’s Hot Docs world-premiering (International Spectrum) The Last Relic is a work of thought-provoking – and often head-spinning – contradiction. Over the four years leading up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Estonian filmmaker embedded with several brave activists in the seemingly blissfully ignorant city of Yekaterinburg, where Tsar Nicholas II and his family met their grisly fate, and which now celebrates its imperialist past with extravagant balls and military marching parades. (Needless to say, an anti-Putin sign proclaiming «He is not our tsar!» is firmly in the minority position.) Divided into easily digestible, single slogan chapters («power,» «solidarity,» «secrets,» «rules,» «revelation,» «survival,» etc.), the film’s clear-eyed prescience is at times downright startling as is seeing the colourful and festive, and buoyantly youthful, anti-Putin protests that Kaat’s hyperaware eye captures. In fact, the tick-tock closing in of the state apparatus on these would-be revolutionaries basically renders The Last Relic a real-time docu-thriller.

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