Russian Lessons plot
When war breaks out between Russia and Georgia in early August 2008, filmmakers Andrei Nekrasov and Olga Konskaya head for the front from two sides. Nekrasov approaches the front line from the "European" south, and Konskaya from the "Russian" north. Along the way they send each other their images. For example, Nekrasov can show the refugees he meets in the south images of their destroyed villages in the north. In addition, the directors of this personal investigation into the war compare their visual material with the official reading by the Russian government, a reading that was blindly copied by the Western media. Moreover, they place the war in the context of post-Soviet Russia, with a central role for the forgotten genocide during the 1993 struggle between Georgia and the still contested Abkhazia.