Inside Putin’s Russia: Ice Swimming and Gangster Slang Feature in Filip Remunda’s ‘Happiness to All’
In Filip Remunda’s documentary “Happiness to All,” the Czech filmmaker portrays a characteristically off-kilter protagonist – and one who projects invincibility somehow tinged with doom. The film made its world premiere this week at the Ji.hlava Film Festival in the Czech Rep., where it won the best Central and Eastern European documentary award.
Vitaly, a former nuclear physicist and record holder in extreme cold-exposure training, makes his living as a construction worker on the fringes of Siberia, barely eking out a living. While his parents, still prominent scientists, reminisce about the glory of the Soviet regime they helped build, Vitaly finds his passion for Mother Russia on a different frequency.
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Although also an avowed patriot himself, who spends his time rebuilding the foundations of rotting houses, Vitaly focuses on his video blog espousing his home repair skills and the evils of capitalism. But the energetic, foul-mouthed galoot seems mainly focused on drilling through ice for a swim as often as possible.
And as Remunda’s team follows him over eight years, Vitaly’s begins to come to an awakening of sorts, souring on the system that defunded Academic Town, the Novosibirsk settlement built to house scientists under the old regime, while longing for a more just Russia.
Marching on May Day with the Communist Party bigwigs and their followers one day, Vitaly decides he’s had enough and admits “these people are full of shit.”
“His story is typical,” says Remunda, “but his behavior is very unusual because he is a very honest person and he isn’t hiding anything, basically. He reminded me of some characters from Czech literature like Josef Svejk, so that through his openness, I can actually see things that are normally hidden. I liked very much that I would see an unmasked country, Russia, through the eyes of someone who is cheering for his president and country and saying Russia is the freest country in the world.”
Vitaly also has some thoughts on the world of real estate. “To a real man,” he says, “a house is just a place to sleep. These dudes whose house is their whole life, their ‘personal space’ and shit, they’re not people, just cut-out cardboard figures. They don’t want to be pioneers, to create or discover things, all that matters to them is what they own, how much they pay to some fucking moneybag in mortgage, how big is their fucking flat.”
Despite (or because of?) Vitaly’s many colorful rants, he eventually lands himself a bride, Olga, hauling her into the icy water for a marine-based ceremony. Maybe not surprisingly, we don’t see much of her afterwards – though she also admits admiringly, her beau reminds her of Aquaman.
Remunda says he and his editor realized they had a character strong enough to base a film on after beginning to follow him when he gained notoriety for swimming under a bridge that Putin was opening near his home.
Remunda, the Czech director and producer known for his confrontational satirical docs on social issues, is co-founder of the Institute of Documentary Film in Prague and the indie production company Hypermarket Film. He’s also co-author of the Czech Television series “Czech Journal” and, as half of a directing duo with Vit Klusak, has made a steady stream of films for 20 years being feted a the 28th Ji.hlava fest: “Czech Dream,” “Czech Peace,” “The Good Driver Smetana” and “Once Upon a Time in Poland.”
Fitting nicely into the ironic approach celebrated by Michael Moore, who has promoted Remunda and Klusak’s work, Vitaly’s story offers a rare insight into the mindset of the millions of Russians who remain as patriotic as ever while watching their world fall apart.
As the ice swimming champ puts it, “I’m not afraid of a coup; I’m looking forward to it. Any change will be for the better, because it can’t get any worse.”
Capturing the flavor of Vitaly’s speech, which Remunda describes as a mixture of Russian gangster slang and “the language of poets,” was key, the director says.
The ring of laughter in the cinema hall of Jihlava’s own Soviet-era wonder, the DKO culture center, signaled that that the “Happiness” team got it right.
Meanwhile with all his actions, Vitaly illustrates clearly the problems and dysfunction ordinary Russians face, from poverty to scarcity to flooded streets and broken down housing.
“My goal was to understand this paradox,” Remunda says. “Why somebody like Vitaly supports the country and regime when the country has no social security system provided to him as he lives beyond the border of poverty, more or less. And still he sees that ‘this is the best for me.’”
“So I was trying to get closer to him and understand this paradox. He is about the same age as me and lived roughly 5,500 kilometers away and because we live in different countries our political perspectives are dramatically different.”
And as for whether the filmmakers reach that understanding? “I hope so, yes. And I hope that we have that in the film.”
Vitaly, of course, will never see his worker paradise, as the final act of “Happiness” shows conclusively.
“He was really willing to change society for the better,” Remunda says. “He was not the type of person who is passive. He was active. So we wanted to imprint that onto his story – he actually was calling for change.”
“The film is tragic, of course, because it tells the story of someone who supports a regime responsible for the war in Ukraine – there’s human tragedy in it. But probably when you are talking so openly and you are honest, it provokes other people to think.”
Perhaps most ironically of all, Vitaly, with his Ukrainian last name Panasyuk, is likely to have had relatives living under fire, thanks to his great hero, Putin.
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