Pushkin House, in collaboration with Afisha.London, an independent culture magazine and production company, welcomes filmmaker Sergey Kuznetsov for an evening devoted to DDT: XX Century – a film made clandestinely in Russia between 2022 and 2025.

The film tells a century of Russian and Soviet history through four generations of one family. Revolution, war, repression, and the collapse of the USSR are seen through ordinary lives, family memory and the choices people make when history enters their homes. Running through the film is the music of DDT, one of Russia’s best-known anti-establishment rock bands, led by songwriter Yuri Shevchuk. Each episode grows out of a DDT song and has its own visual language, combining drama, archive footage and animation.

Kuznetsov began his work in 2022, when Shevchuk and his band had become effectively unable to perform publicly in Russia. DDT: XX Century was created outside the official Russian film industry and has no theatrical release in Russia. The filmmaker now lives in exile.

Illustrated with excerpts from the film, the conversation at Pushkin House will explore how this project was conceived and brought to life, why Sergey Kuznetsov chose to tell twentieth-century history through one family and the music of DDT, and what it meant to create the film in Russia after 2022. The discussion will also look at the current state of Russian cinema, censorship in the cultural sphere, the voices that no longer reach Russian screens, and the space that remains for independent filmmakers.

The talk will be in Russian, with live translation into English.
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Since its completion, DDT: XX Century has been screened in Germany, Spain, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and other countries. This November, Afisha.London is bringing the film to cinemas across the UK and Ireland from 17-24 November, with screenings in Dublin, London, Liverpool and Glasgow.

This conversation is held in connection with the London screening of DDT: XX Century at Hackney Picturehouse on 19 November 2026. Tickets and information: 
https://afishalondontickets.com/events/ddt-xx-vek-london

Sergey Kuznetsov is a film director born in 1983 in Cheboksary, Russia. He graduated from the Directing Department of the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), where he studied in the workshop of Igor Maslennikov.

In 2005, he founded CarpeDiemFilm, which has produced feature films, documentaries, animation, music videos and commercials. Its films have been screened internationally and acquired for distribution in Russia, China, France, Turkey, Poland, Mexico, Romania and Estonia. He is the creator, director and editor of DDT: XX Century (2026).

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