See lockdown Moscow life in this bittersweet musical mockumentary

Russian film studio Red Pepper Film has launched a series of musical mockumentaries on life under lockdown.

Their first video, Nepokoy. Nachalo. Mig (Or Restless. The Beginning. A Moment) shows a day in the life of a young father, going through the routine motions of waking up; brushing his teeth, scanning the to-do list, and rolling a cigarette while his child is watching cartoons. “This script is written for our children,” the video says.

The video combines a contemporary track with an old Soviet song.

The soundtrack to the morning routine is Russian Ukrainian pop star Ivan Dorn’s upbeat dance electronic song Opomnis’ (or Come to your senses in English).

It later switches to Dorn singing Soviet classic “Mig” (“Moment”), which featured in the 1973 film The Land of Sannikov. “There’s only a moment between past and present, and it is called life,” the song kicks off, existentially.

Animated by footage of Moscow under lockdown, the music creates a nostalgic atmosphere. We see the domes of a church, wait in traffic, wander through empty subways, and walk past a closed children’s playground alongside the poetic lines: “Let this world run through centuries, but its ways are not always my ways.”

“I decided that we need the kindest voice to do a remake of “Mig”, and Ivan is the most positive person I know,” Danil Golovanov, founder and creative director of Red Pepper Film, told The Calvert Journal.

Other musicians taking part in the video series include dance pop and alternative rock singer Polina Favorskaya, indie artists Daniel Shake and Sansara, and rock band Mummy Troll.