When the filmmaker has an answer to everything, he only presents his certainty. I’m being vague about the film I’m making, I feel that there’s something wrong, and I want to understand what it is. That’s Real Cinema- when the filmmaker is experiencing a certain life process in parallel with the viewer.
Interview with Vitali Mansky
ArtDocfest, Riga, March 2025
You lived in Lviv until you were seventeen, then you studied and worked in Moscow, today you live in Latvia, but you also have family roots in Lithuania. How do you see yourself in terms of your own identity? Do you feel more European, Russian, or is it more important for you to perceive yourself through something else?
In the Soviet Union, there was the expression “nationless cosmopolitan”. It was a derogatory term. No, I feel it very clearly. I see my homeland as Ukraine, my home as Latvia. I make no secret of the fact that I worked in Russia and was a Russian director. A large part of my creative biography is connected with Russian film. However, it is not a question of national identity, but of personal responsibility. Because what Russia is doing now should also be evaluated by each person from their own point of view – what they did or didn’t do to make Russia not what it is today. I repeat, it is not a question of national identity, but a question of moral self-worth.
You are the author of the Real Cinema manifesto. In one of its points you say that documentary film never has a definitive end. In 2014, you made the film Close Relations, which captures the conflicting reactions of your relatives living in Ukraine to the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas. Have you considered following up that film with a new version after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022?
When the full-scale war started, I thought about returning to my heroes. But after a quick analysis, I realized that there were no fundamental changes – rather, it was just a confirmation and development of what was already present at the time. And so I decided not to do it.
I’m currently shooting a new film in Odessa, where my mother has moved. With the beginning of the war, I took her to live with me in Riga, where she lived for over a year, but then she wanted to come back. So I’m entering Odessa through her story. I filmed her 80th birthday, my half-sister, a neighbour – and gradually, the gallery of portraits in today’s Odessa is expanding.
What is decisive for you when making a film? – thorough preparation or rather director’s intuition? What does this process look like for you – do you go into the shoot with a clear idea or do you prefer to leave room for spontaneity and wait to see what the situation brings?
I try to answer the questions that I’m genuinely interested in through the making of the film. If I already know the answer to those questions, I probably won’t make a film. And you can always see that in a film – when the director already has the answer to everything and then just presents his certainty.
Even when I was filming in North Korea (Under the Sun) – where one could have absolute certainty about what is good and what is bad – even there, I was filming with the fact that I was finding out, determining and changing my point of view. For example, I went to North Korea with the idea that I would see the equivalent of the Soviet Union in 1937, that is, an atmosphere of fear. But it turned out that there is no fear there – people live there without knowing that there is another way of life. They have nothing to compare it with, and therefore they are not afraid. I tried to understand that first and then translate it into the film I was making.
Or to take what I mentioned earlier – that I started making the film in Odessa. I found myself talking about it in a vague way, because even I don’t fully understand it yet. I’m still just looking, I feel that there’s something wrong, and I want to understand what it is. I’m trying to figure it out in the process of filming – and the viewer is figuring it out with me. Maybe that’s what real filmmaking is, when you’re experiencing a certain life process in parallel with the viewer.
So can it be said that real cinema is like the truth? And that the goal of real cinema is not to show the truth?
There is one key point in the manifesto of Real Cinema – that there is no script. There is only a starting point from which you begin your exploration. That’s the most important moment. All the other principles can be taken with some irony, but this one is not.
When I enter a film, I establish a starting point. For example, with the new film, I set my mother’s 80th birthday as the starting point. She’s lived a long life, through different eras. And it’s at that point that I dive into the film. Then I watch what’s going on around me, and this circle gradually widens – more characters are added, and I move in that direction. Maybe sometimes in a messy and complicated way, but that’s the dramaturgy of my story.
Similarly with the film I shot in Lviv – it would seem that the situation is clear: there is a city in the background of war, there is the image of war, everything already exists. You just have to put it together and make a film. And that’s what I did – I combined peaceful life with the reality of war. But I felt that it was just the surface, that it was like “taking the whipped cream off the cake,” just the topmost layer. I realized that it wasn’t enough – that I had to live in that situation for a while. And when I began to live in it, I understood that the main element was not facts, but time.
Time became a more important dramaturgical element than the visual images – although those are very spectacular. And you only understand this when you are inside the film. Perhaps this is the main difference between classical and non-classical cinema. I feel that what we are doing, what I love and what I am trying to present to the viewer, is still non-format cinema. It used to be called that, didn’t it?
If you don’t have a script, do you at least have a sense of what the film should look like at the beginning?
Yes. That feeling exists. And there is a visual image. This is very important for me. I always work with the cinematographers before we start shooting to establish visual references. I do it myself, before the shoot, looking for inspiration – it can be feature films, documentaries, paintings. It’s not that I want to literally replicate a composition. For example, for my film Time to the Target, the paintings of Bruegel became a reference point for me. Of course, I can’t replicate his paintings in cinema, but I can get closer to his dramaturgy.
In the film I show micro-stories of different people – from birth to death – and they are all on the same plane, they all have the same importance. There are no stories in my film that are bigger or smaller, they all have the same scale. They are arranged in a seemingly chaotic structure, like Bruegel’s, although occasionally some of the characters come to the fore – for example, in his paintings there are hunters returning home. In my film, the military musicians play this role – they are in the foreground, larger. All the other stories are around them, but on the same scale.
And what’s fascinating – I only set this reference point for myself, I didn’t tell anyone about it. Only to the cameraman. But after a week of working with the sound director, he told me himself: “You know, your film reminds me of Bruegel’s paintings.” It was a huge compliment to me, because I never told him that. He could just feel it from the material. And that means that it worked.
Your film Putin’s Witnesses captures a particularly powerful moment from New Year’s Eve 1999, when you film the moment Boris Yeltsin announces the transfer of power to Vladimir Putin in a televised speech during a family celebration. Your wife Natalya then irritably refuses to comment on the situation, angrily leaves the room and abruptly closes the door behind her. Nevertheless, you doggedly follow her on through the camera. Finally, she utters almost prophetic words about Putin, even saying that Yeltsin’s time will be remembered as a “golden era” compared to what is now coming. Yet most of the world began to understand Putin only after 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia. At that point, what made you continue filming despite Natalya’s disapproval? Was it intuition, or did you know even then that you were recording a historic moment?
I could say that a documentary filmmaker has to have a hunch, but in reality it’s easier. It was the last day of the millennium – of course I wanted to film because it was a historic moment, even if only within our family. I filmed as we celebrated the New Year with friends. And suddenly Yeltsin’s announcement started on TV – it was a covert operation. So I just kept on filming. My wife was shocked and begged me to put the camera down and be a husband at that moment, not a cameraman. But I felt that I was supposed to be a documentarian first and foremost at that moment. And I don’t regret it – and in the end she doesn’t regret it anymore either.
Were you also aware of what your wife meant?
No, no, no, I wasn’t. I was more naive and more willing to make some compromises. I thought: “Yeah, I don’t like him, but it seemed to me that the people making this decision knew what they were doing.” I knew these people – not exactly intimately, but well enough. I knew the people who were making the decisions in the country. I knew that they were basically of liberal views. And I thought that if they picked this man, even though I didn’t like him, maybe I just didn’t know him. I hadn’t met him personally at the time. I thought: “They know better.” But it was when I met him in person that from the very first moment he began to raise questions for me. And by the way, during the filming, you can see how these questions gradually multiply until they eventually turn into open discussion and arguments with this man.
Your way of working with the camera looks very natural – for example, in the film Pipeline, there is a long observational shot of a bus arriving, people getting off the bus and crossing over to the ferry. The camera follows them closely, but the people don’t react to it at all, as if they don’t even notice it. How did you manage to make the characters look completely natural and behave as if the camera wasn’t there at all?
You know, this is very difficult to do – because it’s very simple. What do I mean by that? You need to let go of your inner energy and relax. It is necessary not to exert energy pressure on the camera and on others.
Imagine that I am talking to you and looking into your eyes – that’s one type of conversation. But if I was looking at my phone and talking: “Oh yeah, I was thinking I should ask you out…,” that sounds completely different. Same words, but a different emotion.
When you’re making a film, you have to be aware of the energy you’re bringing into the space. That’s a training thing. For example, when I was filming my aunt in Crimea, she said to me: “I want to see how you shoot your films because your characters always look natural. How do you do it?” I thought: “Well, nice! I get to film her and she gets to watch me film her at the same time.” It wasn’t easy.
But I managed to create a situation where she was focused on talking to her relatives over Skype. When she started arguing with her nephew over the internet, she forgot about the camera and directed all her energy there.
It is said that if a tamer in a cage with a beast begins to feel fear, the animal will not respect him. Or if you’re afraid of a dog, it will start barking at you. If you are not afraid, the dog will not react to you. I don’t want to compare people to animals, but I’m saying that your internal state is extremely important when shooting.
How is it possible to learn this?
That’s just life and experience.
Why did you decide to write the manifesto of Real Cinema?
I have no ambition to create something like a Mendeleyev chart. I just wanted to write down what I felt. I felt that the language of documentary film was changing – not only the language, but the form itself. I wanted to understand why this was happening and what new rules and laws were coming out of it.
Basically, I didn’t invent anything – I was just trying to capture what was already in the air. But honestly, all the manifestos I know are very temporary and not always accurate.
Whether it’s my idol Dziga Vertov’s manifesto or Lars von Trier’s manifesto – they all have the same problem. They are just momentary thoughts that are not very deep.
What do you think is the role of documentary film in the present day, when everyone owns a smartphone and shoots videos or selfies on a daily basis? Does documentary film even make sense anymore?
I think documentary film is now even closer to modern art.
Today we have almost continuous recording of reality – security cameras, mobile phones, endless recordings. You used to sit with a fishing rod and wait for a fish. And when you caught it, it was very lucky.
But now you just cast your net and pick the one golden fish out of thousands. The documentary filmmaker today is more like an archaeologist digging through the dirt looking for something unique. That’s the main role of a documentary film. And this trend is going to get even stronger as we gradually enter a world where everything is recorded.
