"I'm sorry I seem so … sad," said the young man on the stage. Dressed in a voluminous dark hoodie, he both did and did not look like a filmmaker introducing his award-winning documentary on the first night of the True/False Film Fest in Columbia, Missouri. The film, "Where Are We Headed?," won two awards at last year's International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Capturing a year in the life of a big-city metro system, it encompasses a panoply of human experiences — the blank-faced morning commute, the peaceful burden of a sleeping child, a raucous New Year's celebration, police taking positions to quell a demonstration.
But this metro is in Moscow, its baroque stations a reminder of the Soviet Union's abandonment of churches for proletarian sacristies, and the film's focus on ordinary life cannot help but serve as a reminder of what is no longer possible in Ukraine since the recent Russian invasion.
No one is more aware of that than the man who made it, Ruslan Fedotow. "It has been an intense time," he said after apologizing for his subdued appearance. "I read the news every minute. My friends and I did not vote for our current dictator, and we just want this war to end. I hope this film will help explain some of what is happening in Russia," he added by way of abbreviated introduction. "So enjoy, but yeah."
