Please Note: this event will be held in Russian. All discussion, Q&A, and materials will be in Russian only and, on this occasion, no translation will be provided.

Cinema is often accused of repetition: they say that all stories have been told long ago, and new cinema only varies old plots. The writer and essayist, Jorge Luis Borges claimed that all narratives fit into four eternal plots. Does this mean that originality is a myth, or does repetition reveal a deeper meaning?

In his lecture, Anton Dolin, one of the best-known film critics writing in Russian, will discuss how world cinema replays these four plots anew, confronting them with the reality of the 21st century. Political conflicts, cultural traumas, fears of environmental catastrophe, the crisis of identity – cinema responds to the challenges of the era, trying to make sense of them. Why do the same archetypes work today like never before? How do adaptations and remakes become a way of engaging with the present rather than escaping into the past?

The lecture invites us to view the recurrence of stories not as the exhaustion of imagination, but as a reflection of humanity’s global anxieties and hopes.

Doors will open 10 minutes before the event begins, at 7:20pm. 

Anton Dolin is a Russian film critic, journalist, and radio and television host and one of the most influential commentators on both global and Russian cinema. He has worked for Itogi, Vedomosti, Kommersant, Gazeta.ru, and Afisha magazine, served as editor-in-chief of Iskusstvo Kino (The Art of Cinema) magazine, and collaborated with the radio station Echo of Moscow and the TV channel Rain. He is the author of numerous books and articles on cinema, a recipient of professional awards, and a regular participant in film festivals and educational projects. He left Russia in 2022 and was later added to the registry of “foreign agents” by the Russian authorities. Now based in Latvia, he continues to work actively as a film critic and publicist abroad.