“How to save a dead friend” a shocking documentary on post-Soviet youth in a “Depressed Russia”

For a dozen years, Marusya Syroechkovskaya filmed her daily life with Kimi, the love of her life. Recomposed a posteriori with images captured during all these years, music, and images gleaned here and there, the film traces the chaotic journey of this couple on the edge of the abyss, until the fall, with in the background this what the director calls the “Russia of depression”. The film, screened in more than 60 festivals and awarded numerous prizes, will be released in theaters in France on June 28.

In 2005, the year of her sixteenth birthday, Marusya decides that this year will be the last year of her life. She plans to end her life before she turns 17. But she meets Kimi, a boy as desperate as her. For her, Kimi, is, she thinks, “the perfect person”, her “dream soul mate”. By his simple presence, he helps him to overcome the difficult times in this Russia “for sad people”. They move in together and get married.

From their first moments, the young girl films their daily life. The parties, the alcohol, the drugs, the happy moments and the moments of despair, the New Year’s speeches from the president, which tick away and promise without ever changing anything, the demonstrations, the national euphoria of a football victory… She also films Kimi’s deeper and deeper addiction, first to drugs, then to medication, which he is prescribed at the hospital, where he performs more and more of stays. Time passes under Marusya’s camera, which captures, powerless, Kimi’s slow and ineluctable deterioration, until the fatal day of November 4, 2016.

cry of anger

Chronicle of an announced death, dark painting of Putin’s Russia, this documentary is made up of images captured by the director for almost twelve years, which she edited after Kimi’s death, and which she comments on afterwards.

Marusya Syroechkovskaya works her material like a visual artist, enriching with music, texts, work on color, light, these archive images captured in the moment, on the spot, without pre-established design, if not perhaps -to be, unconsciously, the one to save herself. “Marusya, has one goal at least, it’s to film all day” loose Kimi while himself seems definitely lost.

Intimate, but also collective history, How to save a dead friend depicts this post-Soviet generation born just before the end of the USSR, and whose life began in the darkness of the terrible crisis that followed, then grew up in the authoritarian and repressive regime put in place by Putin. Many of these post-Soviet children died, their names, and the cause of their death, often suicides, (overdose, accident, fall from a bridge…) are stated throughout the documentary.

Political crisis, social misery, disillusionment, Marusya Syroechkovskaya’s film sounds like the angry cry of a generation paying dearly for an impossible transition. But it is also a cry of love, and a dazzling demonstration of freedom. The one that this young director allowed herself by recording, camera in hand, day after day, the diary of her life, her love, and her country, to make a film of exceptional strength.

The sheet

Gender : documentary
Director: Marusya Syroechkovskaya
Country : Russia
Duration : 1h 43min
Exit : June 28, 2023
Distributer : The Twenty-Fifth Hour

Synopsis :

At sixteen, Marusya is determined to end her life, like many Russian teenagers. Then, she meets a soul mate in another millennial named Kimi. For ten years, they film the euphoria and the anxiety, the happiness and the misery of their youth muzzled by a violent and autocratic regime within a “Russia of the Depression”. A cry from the heart, a tribute to an entire generation reduced to silence. (Warning: scenes, words or images may offend the viewers’ sensitivity)