“Russia today” is a political documentary essay about Russia, filmed in the Russian exclave Kaliningrad.
 Runners, numbers, applause. Fishers, horses, plows. Aggression, migration, surveillance, love. 2 spiders, 1 ring of power. Interweaving motifs gathered on their journey through the region, the German filmmaker and her Russian sound recordist assemble a metaphorical mosaic of reflections on Russia’s current status quo. Fragments of conversations create a temporary space for personal encounters. The audience is invited to enter and reflect.
“Russia today” positions itself along the intersections of films such as Shelly Silver's “Former East/Former West” (1992), Chantal Akerman’s “From the East” (1993), Ruth Beckermann’s “American Passages” (2011), Kirstin Johnson’s “Cameraperson” (2016) and Deborah Stratman’s “Illinois Parables” (2017). 


Annegret Sachse: "By February 2016, when I visited my friend Yulia in Moscow, Putin had occupied Crimea, invaded Ukraine and Boris Nemzow had been murdered in eyesight of the Kremlin... Observing fish, typewriters and people is a subjective footnote to Russia’s current political situation".

80 years after Alexander Medvedkin's train, Kinopoezd returned to the same route. In January 2013, a group of 21 filmmakers from 14 countries gathered in Moscow for the first time. The very next day they went on a trip to make films in which they were supposed to explain the widespread stereotypes about Russia.