The turn of the millennium would mark a series of crucial events in the modern history of Russia, which Vitali Manski was able to follow from the privileged proximity to high-stakes, high-level politics, as the cameraman to the presidents. With backstage access to where the strings were being pulled in post-communist Russia, the filmmaker managed to record the conversations, the confessions, the memories and the deceptions of the last leaders during the transition period from the former USSR to democracy: Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. Years later, Manski returns to the footage, revisiting the images and trying to recompose the picture of Putin’s rise to power in one of the most powerful countries in the world. The documentary is delectable, bringing us face to face with figures who have made and are still making history, introducing us into their intimate lives and weaving a retrospective discourse infused with small individual peculiarities, with characters whose relationship edges between friendship and betrayal. (Andreea Chiper)