Documentary "Guardians of Memory"

October 07, 2022

Our team made a documentary about the Russian Memorial society, the history of its liquidation and the extremely difficult situation in which its employees found themselves after the start of full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine. Many of them were forced to leave Russia, some ended up in the Czech Republic.

For more than thirty years, the Russian Memorial Society has been studying the history of Soviet repression and documenting numerous evidences of human rights violations in the USSR and in modern Russia. Thanks to this work, the names of three million victims of Soviet terror became known.

Now Memorial is going through extremely difficult times: at the end of 2021, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation liquidated the parent organization and several of its branches, and after the start of a full-scale war of Russia against Ukraine, the situation worsened even more. Many Memorial employees are in danger. What should they do next? And how can the Czech Republic help them?

The premiere of the film will take place on Monday, October 24 at the Prague cinema Evald (Národní 60/28, 110 00 Nové Město). Link to the event on Facebook is here.

The film will also be shown at the events dedicated to the political situation in Russia, which our team organizes in Olomouc and Brno. The film is also available for viewing on online platform DaFilms.

To organize a film screening in your city, contact us at [email protected].

Guardians of Memory (Czech Republic, 2022)

Written, directed and edited: Tomáš Polenský
Idea: Štěpán Černoušek
Camera: Tomáš Polenský, Petr Jurаčka, Igor Suvorov
Production: Tereza Soušková
Dramaturgy: Vojtěch Dudek
Sound Mix: Pavel Matyáš

© Gulag.cz © Memorial ČR