SYNOPSIS
Black comedy meets dark history along “the Road of Bones Michigan region phone ,” a 2,000-kilometre stretch of Siberian highway that’s literally built on the bodies of Stalin’s prisoners. Millions of political dissidents and innocent villagers were sentenced to die mining the gold of the desolate Kolyma region in Stalin’s infamous prison camps. Spurred by his grandfather’s stories, filmmaker Stanislaw Mucha travels the road, starting at Magadan’s “gate to hell” and ending at Yakutsk, the coldest city in the world, capturing harsh landscapes through all four seasons. Literally stumbling over bones along the way, Mucha discovers a bizarre mix of eccentrics who have either never heard the word “Gulag” or have a terrifying firsthand experience of them. From a clueless hotdog vendor to an electrocution hobbyist, former guards and surviving prisoners live alongside one another on the world’s longest burial ground. Irreverently comical and historically revelatory, this unique travelogue uncovers painful truths frozen in a not-so-distant past. – Myrocia Watamaniuk
CREDITS
DIRECTOR Stanislaw Mucha
PRODUCER Gerd Haag
EDITOR Emil Rosenberger
WRITER Stanislaw Mucha
CINEMATOGRAPHER Enno Endlicher
MUSIC Eike Hosenfeld / Moritz Denis / Tim Stanzel
SOUND Tim Altrichter
FILM DETAILS
GENRE Documentary
COUNTRY Germany
YEAR OF PRODUCTION 2017
RUNTIME 85 Minutes