< I STOP TIME>

GUNILLA BRESKY RETROSPECTIVE “RUSSIA PLAYED A HUGE ROLE IN MY EVOLUTION AS A FILM DIRECTOR”

This documentary film is based on archived materials and uses some exceptional footage from the battlefields, home front and travel during wartime, portraying World War II as a black-and-white dream in slow motion. It is dedicated to the memory of a well-known front-line reporter, Vladislav Mikosha, who documented the horrors of the war in Sevastopol, and uses as basis Mikosha's eponymous book about his life. To collect material for her film, Gunilla Bresky spent hours in the documentary archives of Russia’s Krasnogorsk. After having been wounded in Sevastopol, Mikosha was sent to Moscow for treatment. He recovered to the bitter news of the Crimea being occupied by the Germans. Mikosha’s next assignment was to travel to Arkhangelsk and join a group of four cameramen bound for England to film the voyage of a British warship escorting lend-lease cargoes to the USSR. In the Barents Sea, the ship would be repeatedly bombed by the Germans amid naval mines. The route back was too dangerous, and the Soviet cameramen received permission to fly via America. Mikosha and his colleagues were in New York when the pivotal Battle of Stalingrad was carrying to its victorious end. They also went to California and Hollywood, where Mikosha was welcomed as a hero. He was one. It is thanks to his courage and skill that we have the unique footage of the historical moments of World War II.