About 20 minutes into Putin’s Kiss, a Danish documentary screening Saturday and next Thursday at the European Union Film Festival, filmmaker Lise Birk Pedersen drops in on a restaurant gathering of young Putin supporters that suddenly erupts in a beer-hall chant. “Ne-ver! Lie or betray! And don’t be a swine!” shouts one dude in horn-rimmed glasses and a knit hat, pounding on a table and leaping to his feet to face the camera. The other kids form ranks behind him, shouting: “Don’t be a Judas like opposition leader Nemtsov! Remember that you live in Russia! It’s the best country, and dickheads are not tolerated here!” Welcome to the world of Nashi, a progovernment youth group founded in 2005 to counter left-wing opposition to the Putin regime, and woe to you should you be judged a dickhead.
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Pedersen frames her film as a profile of Masha Drokova, who was only 16 when she joined Nashi in 2005 but whose smarts and enthusiasm catapulted her to the top echelon of the organization. A tireless Nashi activist who once collected a kiss from Vladimir himself on TV, Drokova was awarded a medal of honor from the president in 2007, attended a top university, and even had her own TV show, a real credential in a nation where the airwaves are strictly policed by the ruling party. But her growing friendships with liberal journalists—particularly the muckraking Oleg Kashin, who appeared as a guest on her show—pulled her from the far right toward the center and alienated her from Nashi’s charismatic founder, Vasily Yakemenko. This isn’t quite the human drama Pedersen might wish, but it’s compelling enough, and more important, it gives us a look at conservative Russian politics at their most ruthless and vindictive.
Drokova may be too much a work in progress to command attention in so charged a political atmosphere (on one TV appearance she advocates burning books by dissident writer Eduard Limonov, then backs down after the host gives her a lecture on book burning). But as her story progresses, Pedersen also presents many fascinating and chilling glimpses of Nashi, a legion of young political shock troops who worship Putin and demonize his opponents with the most incendiary rhetoric. “Shame on Russia’s enemies!’ proclaims a banner in the annual Russian March, which draws some 30,000 young people from Moscow and its suburbs. Marchers carry placards with the names and photos of journalists, human rights activists, and other opponents of the Kremlin, labeled “Russia’s Disgrace.” Another poster reads “There are no bad nations, only bad people.” Trained in paramilitary tactics at camp, Nashi members monitor the political opposition and turn out in force to quash protests by occupying strategic street corners in Moscow.
Directed by Lisa Birk Pedersen
