In Full Agreement

“First comes Pushkin and ballet. Then come the tanks.” When Russia invaded Ukraine, the attitude towards everything Russian changed. According to those sitting on top of the nation’s cabinet, the war opened eyes and cured blindness: there are no friends in the East.

However, a significant number of people who speak Russian as their mother tongue live in Finland. Each of them has had to find their place between the Russian aggression and the tightening attitudes in their current homeland.

Director Panu Suuronen follows the struggle of three women in a situation that no one wanted. The women navigate the anti-Eastern jamboree in their own style, but each of them has to confront their own Russianness and increasingly more frequent Russophobia – whether it’s coming from their employer, their own internal conflict or a society that is quickly pushing the Russian minority into second-class citizens.

Anastasiia shoots rounds and discusses hybrid influencing with Jessikka Aro while baking Karelian pies. Her child is only spoken to in Finnish. Karina organises small demonstrations one after another to get the eastern border reopened and travels through Narva to see her father, who has had a stroke. Marina has a Kafkaesque discussion with the Finnish bureaucracy about a lecture series on Russian culture: are we living in a time when the backs of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Akhmatova are being broken and thrown on a pile of rubbish?

Minna Saarinen (translated by Kati Kiviniemi)

Director Panu Suuronen will attend the film screening on 4 Feb.