This movie, like Stanislaw Mucha´s other films, is brutally honest and unapologetic – at least this is how I perceive them – and so I´ll fallow his lead… 

These are my impressions: They might be right, they might be to some extend or I might have gotten it all wrong. There might be spoilers as well, so this is your warning!

People who know a thing or two about me do know: I´m not the fondest concerning documentaries – Yes, I know it´s funny as I started working on one myself and actually got an incredible idea for an another one as well – The one to date which entertained me immensely was Banksy´s Exit Trough The Gift Shop, a mocumentary, it was hilariously sarcastic  – The thing is: While at university they always said: „A documentary is a portrayal of reality, it does not judge.“ Well, let me tell you that this is most definitely not true and also not possible. Depending on who made the documentary, you´ll aways ALWAYS! be influenced or at least get the feeling of what point of view the filmmaker has.

– Though as I said, these Interviews are unapologetic honest – and what I mean by that is: They capture the interviewees just as they are –  but if you´ve seen other films by Stanislaw or have met him, you´ll definitely get the vibe of his personality throughout this story and how he perceives the people he meets on his way  –  Needless to say, I – back then in university – thought if there is fiction at least let it be real fiction and people hopefully know it is. Meaning: Fantastic stories and where to find them, but not a fake reality which might not exist as such. I rather let people believe in some fantastic beast then trying to implement some reality which might not be their own and hence manipulating their thoughts. In general: Use your discriminating awareness! Let´s give a rigorous example: The right-wing person who makes a documentary about the same topic as someone from the left, will defiantly insert his „point of view“, so does the other person as well. Depending which is your own way of thinking, this correlates with it or not. In both cases it still does not depict an image of reality, just one of many views and sometimes people really just talk rubbish in order to get people to see things their way and unfortunately some start believing it. – Back to Banksy´s movie. Watch it, one of its main points is, if you sell your stuff the right way, people will believe and buy anything – My DoP and I did film actual genuine footage, there was nothing staged about it but we also had to stage some of the stuff, and I never felt good with those bits. If asked why I haven´t progressed with the project I normally state: “I always have the rough cut in my head, with this I have sequences but then suddenly they won´t fit together, there are blackbursts in between.” I guess it is partly because I balk at the notion I will not be able to genuinely and ONLY depict reality. As much as I want to and no matter the amount of genuine filmed footage, in the editing room I need to “cut it into some sort of shape”. Of course on top, it´s how my DoP and I perceive that buddhist monastery in the pine jungle in the Himalayas.  – 

I also never much liked the directors of documentaries. Some were incredibly narcissistic and although I do know one needs to get the people to say certain things but more often than not I got the feeling, they forgot they were actually talking to a human being and the „Grater Good“ was the justification to sometimes actually break the interviewees. Like: I got what I came for, what to I care what will happen to you after this is screened? – I should mention there is an Interview in Kolyma, which made me think: „The 1000.000 million question: Is he still alive?“ – 

So, why is this different? The difference is, at least to some extend: I know Stanislaw – I had the pleasure of working with him some time ago – He´s funny, he´s witty and no matter how badmouthed and politically incorrect he is, he does care! – I´m still mortified, as I nearly pissed my pants laughing about the joke he made about why the polish hat not yet stolen the Great Bear. I, who´s over politically correct and always tries to be diplomatic… later I justified it with the fact, that Stanislaw is born in Poland and if he´s making that joke, it´s okay to deem it funny in that exact moment –  

I don´t know, this might sound stupid but someone who… makes – after watching the indeed very exiting football-match GER – SWE, I changed my mind on certain points – let´s say: He applies some good old discriminating awareness and people will be treated accordingly. What I saw of his work never left that bad taste in my mouth as with the others. He seemed to care about those people who were in need of or earned it.

Kolyma brought me on the verge of tears, it made me do several double takes, it made me laugh quite a lot and it made me (re)think about several different topics. It was most definitely „entertaining“ and this on so many different levels.

On the day of it´s cinematic release I found myself in an old cinema in my city, build by the architect Hans Poelzig, as I did promise Stanislaw to go and see it. I was also immensely curious as after watching bits and pieces of his other films and that one film which bamboozled me the most and made me think: „That is fucking amazing, this what I call a filmmaker!“ was: Absolut Warhola. Why? Because it is fucking insane, that´s why! 

I happened to be the first person in the theatre, using the time waiting recapping what I figured out for myself that day – which was actually a major epiphany and will probably have quite an impact on certain things – as I finished up, another person entered the theatre and driven by curiosity, I asked him why he chose to watch Kolyma. Well, I went to see it because a) I promised Stanislaw b) Curiosity c) Educational purposes. “If it is as good as I think it might be: Watch and learn!”

This interaction ended in an immensely pleasant evening/night, talking about movies, filmmaking, philosophy, ethics and psychology. – Thank you so much for your invitation, I very much enjoyed your company and the intelligent conversation! And thank you Stanislaw for unknowingly providing the cause for it. –

So, now I’ve written a huge ass introduction and still nothing about the fucking movie… and it´ll be probably small pieces and thoughts on the different interview and images. 

Kolyma is a highway in deepest Russia, on end of it is Irkutsk. Along that street used to be the convict colonies of the Soviet Union which are also known as Gulags – by the way Stanislaw: I, did know what a Gulag is… should have asked me not the woman at the Hot Dog – This road is literally paved with the corpses of those who went to those camps. 

 Let´s start with the incredible beautiful camerawork, let´s make it short: It was so breathtakingly beautiful that although this is a serious topic and probably a very spooky place to be, I got the pull to actually go there and see it for myself. As a fellow filmmaker, I was over the moon to see such esthetic – the shots outside as well as the interviews – shots, good lighting and a nicely done grading. One of my highlights concerning this was a transition which was just perfect: The car, during the winter, is driving on Kolyma, snow everywhere and a bank of mist and one can not see further than a few meters. We drive into the mist and suddenly it becomes a dust cloud and as we pass through, we are suddenly on the same part of the street (?) but now it is summer (?), everything is green. 

As far as I remember there rarely was some scoring but then a sometimes reoccurring theme. For the rest, there were interludes of boys and girls as well as woman standing on a stage performing songs – which I did find totally absurd at least after reading their lyrics  and watching the performance – There was one woman at the end, she appeared with an older man, she played the accordion and that actually sounded very nice. In correlation with her emotional companion, it somehow seemed genuine. 

My first thoughts as I saw the lories on that street and Stanislaw talking about how dangerous it is, I remembered the mountain-roads in the Himalayas and thought: „Oh, you haven´t seen those yet haven´t you?„

Funnily enough, what nearly drove me mad, was the cracked windshield of the car – You can laugh all you want Stanislaw, after what you told us and how dangerous this road happens to be, there is this huge ass crack in the fucking windshield and it´s fixed with fucking sellotape!! – I kind of got obsessed with it.

Later my new acquaintance and I pondered on why you put the interview with the shaman at the end. Was it because it was „The end of the journey“? Wouldn´t all those thoughts and questions not have already occurred as soon as you hit the road or at least quite a bit into the journey, while actually driving on that road?

This is about: „Actually we are constantly walking on ground where blood was shed and bits and pieces of bones will probably be part of the soil by now.” It´s something we stopped thinking about and only if we are confronted like while traveling Kolyma, we get self-conscious – I had yet again to think of the families who were slaughtered and left to rot in the pine jungle many decades back, at the place were my mother is living. Or imagine all the ashes from all those concentration-camps, it came out of the smokestacks. I was told, people thought it was snowing. All of it made it into the groundwater and/or became part the soil we are walking on –

 On top of that as my companion spoke Russian, I could check on how well the subtitles were and I am pleased to say: Yes, they are accurate and good. – I was told, people form the countryside speak a more poetic version of the language, so it could have been tricky to actually translate it 1:1 – 

Somehow this is hard to write, it might be because I´m actually afraid what Mr. Mucha will say or maybe because I had such a nice evening and want to keep it to myself. Maybe it´s because it was… There were people who were actually deported to the Gulags, I think one said the only thing he did was stating: „Lenin is an idiot.“ or something along the lines of that. – I was told in my grandparents village someone said something like that about Hitler, he was never seen again. Yes, I know mother he used a different phrase but it amounts to the same – Some actually murdered and then started telling how they did it and how one has to twist the knife to do as such. They talked about the conditions in the camps, they talked about all the people who died very quickly and what happened to their corpses. The perfidious dissonance of people stating they were doing road work and ended up in corpses and then a sequence of visiting the graveyard were the officers lie as well as their families, properly buried including gravestone and pictures.

A woman who had to marry a man whom she didn´t know just to get her money after being released. There were still – now! – families from the Ukraine deported to Kolyma. Others talked about how they got paid, in tones of barley, which after cleaning turned out to be not much at tall – here I remembered a school friend who told me, her mother, her grandmother and her came to Germany from Uzbekistan because they were only paid in lard and there was no possibility to live on and from that – You might say: This is all so horrible, what made you laugh? Let´s say the black humor. There was that person in the mines which made one of the most entertaining Freudian slips of all time, starting with Lenin and correcting it into Putin. The same person who wasn´t very fazed about the fact, someone stole 15 barrels of sliver and one of gold. You can´t tell me, nobody saw that! 

Then there was the already mentioned person, which for I pondered about the fact if he still lives – there were clearly those pro-regime, those against it and those probably afraid? – he started telling a story, which made my hair stood on end – no I´m not talking about that guy who treats people with several thousands of volts in electroshocks as he is of the opinion it will regenerate stem-cells –  and Stanislaw unapologetically keeping in the part, which was probably the most incriminating for that person. By the way, after the „Scientist“, started talking about the wonders Jesus brought forth I thought: „He´s insane and hopefully no-one has died of his experiments so far.” – Here I bamboozled my companion as, as soon as I saw this part of the film I pointed, talking to myself, towards the screen and said „Right, that´s the one!“, as Stanislaw already told us about this.

It was like a train wreck, one looked with disbelieve but couldn´t stop either. Last but not least – and I guess my fellow friends who own/ride horses won´t like this bit – the meat market. I looked in shock, as – though with – 50° you do not need a fridge – they unpacked several horse heads and their legs soon followed. There were masses of fish, then a woman came and produced two rabbits which still had their white fur and were like everything else frozen solid. Ah! And not to forget the old man in his nearly 80´s with a wife in her end of 20´s, really to grasp what actually was said you need to go and see the movie. Or the man who collected items etc. used in the Gulags, he even got the highest award of the Russian Federation and disgustingly started to downplay how terrible those camps had been.

A conclusion? As so many times before I should say: It is imperative to „Not forget“ – not meaning not to move on – but like in the beginning of the movie, some people do not know what a Gulag is and so many people suffered and were murdered and are still buried there. In order to hopefully change whatever will happen in the future to not let something like this ever happen again. To not become to ignorant about the place I live everyday and be aware a lot of things are similar to other places – other things of course thankfully arn´t – To not trap the future generations in a place in which they might never have a future, brainwash them or other such things. To be appreciative of living in a country were I do not need to be afraid to speak my mind. 

As for myself besides the above: Like with every other film-genre: There are good and bad ones, good and bad directors and maybe I should start and rethink my opinion on documentaries… maybe, and in the end will be entertaining my audience as well as make them ponder about the topics in my films, as much as Stanislaw Mucha does with his… or differently: I like Stanislaw´s movies, as they – though they are not without his spirit – as much as I think possible are as objective as a documentary might get. Like I said “Watch and learn!” and maybe, just maybe I´ll finaly finish some kind of teaser trailer for my own documentary and be later graced with an intelligent audience which knows how to watch and perceive a documentary, as it should be.