Vitaly Mansky walks along the shore of Lake Issyk-Kul with Anna Artemyeva, director of The Returnees, winner of the Grand Prix at Artdocnet 2026. For Mansky, Kyrgyzstan has become a place where he can meet and talk with colleagues from Russia. Artemyeva continues to live and work in Russia, at Novaya Gazeta, pursuing journalism and documentary storytelling. Their conversation explores how to make films about war under censorship, where the line lies between trying to understand someone and justifying their actions, what happens to people after they return from the front, and whether documentary cinema can remain honest. Mansky and Artemyeva debate the film "Russians at War", propaganda and the filmmaker’s responsibility, the limits of what is acceptable in documentary cinema, and why, even in the fiercest disagreement, it is important to continue seeing each other as human beings.

There are thousands of teacher-videographers in Russia. Each of them is documenting the militarization of children’s minds amid the war in Ukraine. But only Pavel Talankin, the author of the film “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” came up with the idea of turning this footage into an anti-war manifesto and an exposé of propaganda in schools. Why? Vitaly Mansky tried to find the answer in his DW project “Real Cinema” — while also helping Pavel buy a pair of trousers for the Oscars ceremony.

Vitaly Mansky walks the streets of Riga with Alexander Rodnyansky, formerly one of Russia’s leading film producers. They talk about war, cinema, Russia and Ukraine, emigration, lost meanings, and the people who stayed behind in Russia. Why did so many continue to accept what was happening after 2014? What has become of Russian cinema and the army of talented filmmakers who remained in the country? Why are people in Russia today hiding away and cutting off contact with one another? And how is it possible that humanity can contemplate colonizing Mars while at the same time committing killings on an industrial scale?

“Wherever I am, I never feel like I belong.” Vladlena Sandu’s film “Memory” won the Audience Award in Venice and the Grand Prix at the Artdocfest festival. Sandu was born in Ukraine, lived in Chechnya, and today, as she puts it, is based in Amsterdam. In a conversation with Vitaly Mansky, she reflects on identity, emigration, and the impossibility of reducing a person to a passport or place of birth.