About this submission

"Musya" is a multigenerational effort to expose the crimes of the Soviet Union in WWII. Musya, a living witness to Stalin’s Great Purge and a founder of a Russian school in Toronto, shares stories of resistance to the dehumanizing Soviet regime. Simultaneously, a group of teenage school students are challenging the modern pro-Soviet propaganda by reenacting the roles of an NKVD officer, a persecuted Orthodox priest and a young Musya herself, trying to escape death in a Siberian penal colony. The film commemorates a story drowned out by the loud stomping of celebratory marches and overshadowed by pompous monuments.

Creator
Maria Markina is a Russian-Canadian documentary filmmaker based in Toronto. After graduating from the Documentary Media Master of Fine Arts program at Ryerson University in 2020, Maria was one of eight emerging documentary filmmakers invited to participate in the DOC Ontario's Breakthrough program. Her award-winning documentary film "Musya" participated in international festivals. Her documentary films touched on the topics of under-representation of women in combat sports and the victimization and stereotyping of refugees. Maria is currently working on her first documentary feature "Harkness". more...

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