Trailer for Victory Day (Den' Pobedy).
Every year on May 9, thousands of Russian-speaking Germans and citizens of the former USSR gather in Treptower Park, Berlin, to celebrate the Soviet Union's victory over Nazism in 1945. Carrying flags and banners, dressed in military uniforms or traditional costumes, they drink, dance, sing and lay flowers at the massive monument honoring the 80,000 Red Army soldiers who fell in the battle for the city. With the long deadpan observational takes, precise framing and canny editing characteristic of his previous documentary, Austerlitz, acclaimed director Sergei Loznitsa examines the fascinating choreography of this ideologically charged commemoration. At once a tribute to the sacrifices of the dead, a glorification of Stalinism, an expression of "ostalgia," resentment towards Germany's current hegemony and an adhesion to nationalism à la Putin, the celebration of "Victory Day" demonstrates how lives can be shaped by historical upheaval that happened 72 years ago.