OTETS

The art documentary Otets is based on the life of the extraordinary man Sergei Ovsiannikov (1952 Leningrad – 2018 Amsterdam). He is well-known far beyond the borders of the Netherlands for his fearless crusade against Russia's military interventions in Ukraine and the militant policies of the mighty Russian church. He was a Father, a priest. But film is not about religion. In Otets, we follow Sergei's quest for freedom, a thread that runs through his entire life, and his battle against the greatest enemy of freedom – the 'inner sniper': fear. The filmmaker engages in a conversation with the deceased Father. Did he truly find freedom in the so-called free West? And can those born and raised under dictatorship ever fully grasp freedom? We follow Sergei from his Soviet childhood and imprisonment for freethinking, to his eventual emigration to Amsterdam, where he transforms a small immigrant church into a free home for a diverse, multicultural community. While hundreds revere him as an ideal father figure, his own children reveal a dark side: a punishing, demanding father who burdened them with fear instead of freedom. It doesn't stop there. They pass on their father's “inner sniper guard” to their own children.