A "direct cinema" documentary that explores the art and inner workings of the major art institution in Kyiv, Ukraine. Two special exhibitions - one dedicated to the Ukrainian baroque and another one to a prominent avant-garde artist - are the two defining events in the film's narrative.
Michail is an artist. He is working on a series of paintings called "Franz Kafka's Diary". His son Daniel is thirty-four, and yet his life is hardly separable from the life of his father. He is deaf and mute, and suffers from a severe form of cerebral palsy. Michail is determined and energetic, Daniel - persistent and charismatic. And they are a striking couple. The film offers a detailed observation of two interconnected characters.
This is a film made by Andriy Zagdansky about his father, the screenwriter Yevgeni Zagdansky, who was the editor-in-chief of the Kyivnaukfilm studio for almost 20 years. The story is interspersed with fragments of popular science films and letters from Yevgeni Zagdansky to his son in New York in the 1990s, creating a portrait of both the person himself and the whole era. My Father Evgeni is a film not just about the inevitable generational conflict and the pain of a father’s separation from his son, but also about the events of the 20th century, about people who read banned books, and about the Kyiv that shaped the Zagdanskys.
A prosperous businessman Nikita after his birthday party finds himself in a tiny village surrounded by swamps, but what's more - all the peasants there call him "My lord" and are sure that they are living in Russia in the beginning of the 19th century. At first Nikita finds this hard to believe, but later on he settles down quite comfortably and finds his true love. All would have been well if his friends hadn't played a trick on him - yes, that's all been staged and is part of his birthday surprise. Nikita is torn between returning to his modern world and his love
Using extensive quotes from several Freudian works still banned by the Soviet censorship at the time the film interprets the pivotal points of European history of the past century from a psychoanalytical point of view.
