Maidan

Exclusive one week run!

Sergei Loznitsa’s return to documentary filmmaking after the breakout successes of his fiction films My Joy and In the Fog is a stunning record of a nation at a pivotal point in its history. In December 2013, thousands of young protesters rallied in Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (“Independence Square”) after Viktor Yanukovych, the country’s president, refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union. By March of 2014, riot police had killed over a hundred protesters; Yanukovych, in the face of mounting opposition, had fled for Russia. Loznitsa’s camera captures it all in a series of lengthy on-the-ground shots, mostly devoid of camera movement but thrillingly rich in activity and momentum: a welcome reminder that a movie, like a historical moment, can cast a crowd as its hero. A Cinema Guild release.

Cannes Film Festival 2014
Toronto Film Festival 2014

“Critics' Pick! Easily the most rigorous, vital, and powerful movie of 2014.” —Michael Atkinson, Village Voice

“Maidan is a film of scale and immediacy, finding artistry, for better or worse, in bearing witness.” —Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times

“This stunning, epic-scaled film harkens back to the heroic, journalistic roots of documentary-making and yet feels ineffably modern and formally daring.” —Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter