Taking its title from Andrei Platonov’s dystopian novel, “The Foundation Pit” is a work that imagines Russian culture as building its own mass grave. Editing together YouTube videos in which Russian citizens rebel against and plead with Putin, the film is practically an angry, funny and harrowing manifestation of contemporary Russia. The film premiered in the Panorama Dokumente section of the Berlin Film Festival, and its director Andrey Gryazev spoke about the film’s sources of inspiration and the current political situation in Russia.

Redmond Bacon – Directorsnotes.com

Where did the idea for the film come from, and why did you decide to make a film composed solely of YouTube videos?

I finished my last film, “Tomorrow” (Zavtra), in 2012, and it had its world premiere in Berlin. But I always ran into problems with my subsequent projects. Russian producers advised me not to speak openly about certain subjects; on other projects we couldn’t get official permission, or we couldn’t raise enough money through crowdfunding. At one point, I had a script I had written together with Oleg Negin, the screenwriter of “Leviathan,” and we put together a big co-production with 5 countries, but we couldn’t find a Russian investor.

At some point, I wanted to find a universal and simple form of expression. I felt like someone who visits a contemporary art exhibition and says, “It’s that easy—I could do it too.” And this subject was always hanging in the air. The project came back onto the agenda because of the meaningless summer elections to the Moscow City Duma. When opposition representatives were not allowed to run as candidates, people took to the streets to convey their demands directly to Putin. These events created a unifying theme, and I wanted to understand these people’s motivation. Since I wanted to create a simple form, I had to remove myself as the director. I turned to YouTube channels and started searching for video messages addressed to Putin.

“I began to see the differences between honest messages and the scripted recordings broadcast on TV channels.”

How did you find all these videos, and how does the search process work?

I started with a simple search query: “video message to Putin.” After a few days, I reached the end of the list and concluded that there were no more videos of this kind on YouTube. So I capitalized the first letter of the word “President,” and hundreds of new videos appeared. Even a single period in a search query can matter. I began to see the differences between truly honest messages and the scripted recordings broadcast on TV channels.

How many videos did you use, and what happened to the ones you didn’t use?

It was quite a long process. It took several months. It’s hard to say exactly how much footage there was, but the raw recordings ran to roughly 80-90 hours. Some videos were less than a minute long, while others could run as long as 10-20 minutes. In the end, I had thousands of messages. The first cut was three hours long. It was exciting, but it felt like standing still at the same spot on a Ferris wheel. It was interesting, but it wasn’t going anywhere. The final version contains around 130-140 videos from individual accounts.

The credits list you as writer, editor and producer. Would you say this is a personal project of yours?

We could describe the film as material “made” by the authorities in Russia. It was actually Russian citizens who shot it. I simply wrapped it in nice packaging and translated the messages into the language of cinema. I always make sure to give the name of each video, the date it was uploaded to YouTube and its number of views. This is a tribute to these people. Without them, this film wouldn’t exist. 90% of all the videos contained a message that anyone could pass on to everyone as soon as they saw it, and distribute in any way they liked.

Why doesn’t your film include LGBT perspectives?

These issues didn’t come up in the messages to the president. The LGBT community has long been intimidated, fragmented and erased from the internet, so it is afraid to enter any public space. An organized community doesn’t exist in the media sphere. As they used to say: “There is no sex in the USSR!”

“The slogan ‘We are building a strong state’ says that the authorities have no need for weak people.”

Did you go through any emotional changes while making the film? Did your views on the structural problems in Russia change? Do you feel worse now, or did a new sense of hope emerge after you finished the film?

When I took up this subject, I already knew well the functions of the power structure and the structure of the language the authorities use to address the public. The authorities have long been calling things by their proper names. The slogan “We are building a strong state,” for example, says that the authorities have no need for weak people. It’s a kind of natural selection. Only the strongest survive, and only the strongest are included in the concept of a strong state, it says. We already live in a different country from the one of the ’90s, or of the period from 2000 to 2020.

Do you agree with Platonov’s ideas in the novel about the essence of the USSR / Russia? Or do you see Russia’s future in a more positive light?

I don’t just agree with them; I sympathize with them too. The more we believe in a brighter future, the deeper the pit we dig beneath it. We are at the bottom of this pit. The horizon is receding from us, and it’s no longer possible to reach it.

Finally, how do you see the future of independent documentary film in Russia?

In Russia, independent cinema survives only thanks to co-productions with Western countries. But this trend may change. In my view, the future will be different—especially the speed at which films are made, because the textures of our time are rapidly changing and disappearing. In a country where independent journalism barely exists, documentary films must fill this gap, recording and reflecting life here and now. That is the main condition for its development: the uniqueness of the subjects and the perspective on the problems. This is our advantage and what most sets us apart in the world.

On June 11, “Love, Rebellion, Freedom” will feature “The Foundation Pit”; ticket information is available at this link.

*This interview was published in March 2020 on Directorsnotes.com.