lkfitz Review of Putin's Kiss

Putin's Kiss (2011)

A very bad documentary on a very interesting subject

[24 January 2014]

I agree with the other posters who have said that the style of this doc was unnatural and contrived. It didn't have a candid "real life" feel to it; it was like a loosely scripted reality show at times. There were culture shock moments however, like when Masha talked about what book she'd like to burn, and the march was very interesting. The vast membership of Nashi, the aggression behind the group, the funding, and all the details which made it clear that it was a tool for leveraging political control, like a mini FSB was all very intriguing. Overall though this film felt very amateur and it crossed my mind a couple of times that it could be opposition propaganda rather than a legitimate documentary. For a topic of this magnitude they should've had a much larger and more diverse pool of people to interview. With the scope of perspective being so small, the documentary felt more like a school project.