Constructing Sochi

Director: Steffi Wurster    → show biography   ← hide biography

Biography: Steffi Wurster, born in 1971 in Ludwigshafen / Rhine, is filmmaker and stage designer, lives in Berlin. Her documentary films focus on places that are captured by the camera and questioned about political-cultural inscriptions. From 2009 to 2013 she documented the new modeling of the Olympic bay in Sochi (Constructing Sochi, 73 min, Brot und Spiele, 45min, WDR). In the documentary film project on the Transnistrian Conflict (Frozen Conflict, 60 min), she once again looks at a territory that oscillates between East and West and is prone to be taken hostage by geopolitical manoeuvring. Her work has been shown at festivals, conferences and exhibitions.

Country: Germany

Year: 2014

Synopsis: Imeretinskaya Bay - the heart of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi - is the center of long-term documentation (2009-2013). As the master plan of the games is gradually being implemented residents are relocated from their fertile ground. We experience their lack of power in a nerve-racking fight for adequate compensations. By giving voice to the residents, whose views go unnoticed in the official media, the film shows to what extent the Olympic Winter Games change the residents' living and working situation. Their bottom-up perspective is contrasted with the „top-down“ perspective of Sochi's mayor. He represents the city administration’s patronising approach to handling residents’ complaints. Observing the microcosm of the bay, the shots focus on making visible the brute force with which an area is turned into an extensively built-up urban area. The film depicts the structural change by focusing on different approaches to the ground In a subjective way, it explores the correlation between place and identity and visualizes the ambivalence of development and modernization.

Language: Russian