A documentary by Anna Kryvenko offers an original perspective on the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968. It investigates how we deal with collective memory, which then defines our perspective of the present.

Documentarian Anna Kryvenko offers an unusual perspective on the 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia. She conceived My Unknown Soldier as an audio-visual diary, through which she revisits the events of the time with rare archive material and her own commentary. Her great-uncle was a soldier in the occupying forces; he committed suicide shortly after his return from Czechoslovakia. Kryvenko‘s own Ukrainian origin earns her first-hand experience of the Czechs’ deep-seated hatred of Russian-speaking people. The film therefore casts light on another unfortunate legacy of the August 1968 events in contemporary Czech, but also Ukrainian and Russian society.

“I don’t want to speak about general justice or truth. I would like to show that no truth can be definite. This is a story about how one becomes an “occupier” without intending to." A. Kryvenko

Documentary / Experimental

Director: Anna Kryvenko
Screenplay: Anna Kryvenko
Photography: Radka Šišuláková
Music: Yair Elazar Glotman
Production: Michal Kráčmer, Sergei Serpuhov, Wanda Adamík Hrycová, Veronika Kührová
Edit: Daria Chernyak
Sound: Viktor Krivosudský

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