My Perestroika

My Perestroika is an intimate and heartfelt portrait of the last generation of Soviet children behind the Iron Curtain, their hopes and achievements. Borya, Lyuba, Andrei, Olga and Ruslan were childhood classmates just coming of age when the USSR collapsed.

Borya and his wife teach in Borya’s old school where their son now attends. Olga is an unmarried mom and a billiards table service technician, while Ruslan is a musician with no steady job but works on the sly for cash only jobs. Andrei is a businessman who owns a western style clothing store.

Raised on communist ideals as children, the classmates must adjust to a post-Soviet reality as adults. Director Hessman follows these five children from their Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia.

Masterfully blending contemporary interviews with rare home movie footage from the ’70s and ’80s with official Soviet propaganda films that surrounded them at the time, the film paints a poignant and complex portrait of the challenges, dreams and disillusionments of this cross-over generation.