Mon Chéri Soviétique

The film is made of hundreds of photographs telling a story of the last Soviet soldiers leaving Poland in 1990s. The focus of the work is the figure of a soldier who is not fighting on the war front, but takes off his uniform in front of a camera. The author of “Mon chéri Soviétique” supplements photographs from the past with contemporary film material in which he reenacts past events.

The narrator of the film, an elderly anonymous citizen of Wroclaw goes back to the beginnings of the 1990s and tells a story about the photographer and his life’s project. He describes a world in-between communism and capitalism through a lens of Polish gays’ relations with Soviet soldiers: through their queer friendships, thrilling love affairs, but also gossip and legends. The film is an attempt to save an uncomfortable, suppressed archive that was destined for destruction. An archive that builds queer memory.

Trailer…