A day in the life of Vic, a Russian emigrant in the US, who is a medical transport driver and just a good pal. An action-packed turbulent movie picturing life as a crazy, unpredictable chase that can bring one to a boiling point, yet always leaving a chance to become a slightly better person. Participant of Sundance and the 72nd Cannes Film Festival.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Vic is a medical transport driver that carries people with disabilities. Today he has to deliver his dementia-diseased grandpa to the funeral of the latter’s old friend, help his mom to move a couch, and make sure his passengers get to work and a talent competition on time. Everything gets complicated however as protests organized by the city’s African American population sweep several districts Vic will be driving his van through.
Loosely based on autobiographical motifs (Kirill Mikhanovsky once used to work as a medical transport driver too), Give Me Liberty has recently become one of the main discoveries of the Sundance Festival, and was selected for screening in the Directors’ Fortnight at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival. Shot in an almost documentary manner and without losing its truly hysterical pace, Mikhanovsky’s film portrays a vast world that fits into a provincial American city inhabited by a variety of social types, from Russians and African Americans to people with disabilities and the poor. Their collisions strike sparks, inflame passions, lead to comic as well as tragic or entirely absurd situations, but always leave a chance for mutual understanding on top of any national, cultural, and linguistic barriers. At the special screening at Garage Screen, the picture will be presented and discussed with the audience by its authors, director Kirill Mikhanovsky, co-writer Alice Austen, and actors Maksim Stoyanov and Darya Ekamasova. Moderator: Vladimir Lyashchenko, film critic and video essayist.
This film screening has been organized with the support of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
Give Me Liberty
Director Kirill Mikhanovsky
Russia, 2019. 110 min.
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