In her documentary experiment, Yulia Lokshina addresses the issue of how the institution of school is used by the Russian state to justify its aggressive expansionist actions, either by exterior military violence or by interior ideological violence and persecution of dissidents. The story revolves around a young Russian teacher who speaks out against the war in class shortly after the invasion of Ukraine. A pupil secretly records her statement and denounces her. Soon afterwards, the young woman finds herself the focus of official investigations. She flees to Germany and begins to work as a teacher again. Together with her Berlin class, she reconstructs her own case to understand why this betrayal happened and what consequences censorship and persecution have for the individual, but also for communities.
What is the connection between school and politics, what should it be? How does political oppression feel, and what forms of resistance are possible? These are the questions the children in Berlin-Moabit grapple with. In addition to observations of the class, the film uses archive material, found footage, documentary scenes, and 3D animations to make the situation in Russia, characterised by fear and surveillance, tangible and comprehensible here as well.