Blessed is the person whose home is his kingdom of heaven. They do not have to choose between staying and leaving. The filmmaker left with Katya, Olya, Misha and Finn when his home country Russia covered the whole of Ukraine with terror. They found a piece of heaven on the Turkish island of Heybeliada, where they were soon joined by the painter Yu, who comes from China but studied art in Russia. “China and Russia are very big countries,” an insert explains, “yet here we are, sharing a room in Turkey.” “Heaven and Home” is a snapshot of a temporary exile, a clever and melancholy reflection on origins, community and parting.

The Turkish flag flies from one of the hills on the island. If you climb a mountain you raise your country’s flag to say: This is where I come from. At the Chess World Championship 1990, the Russians Karpov and Kasparov played against each other, one of them under the Soviet flag, the other under a new one representing a democratic Russia. Today, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is waged under this flag. At a pro-war motorcade in Berlin both flags fly in harmony, the Soviet and the Russian one. And Kasparov is once more presenting a flag for a future Russia from which the bloody red has now been erased.