Variety
It’s possible to describe Sergei Loznitsa’s found-footage documentary “The Event” with complete detachment. The film is composed of black-and-white images shot by eight cameramen in St. Petersburg in 1991, when Communist Party stalwarts in Moscow tried to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. People poured onto the streets, the army refused to fire, the coup failed, and the Soviet Union was soon a thing of the past. However, Loznitsa relies on an intelligent audience with historical memory, and among that demographic, few will be unmoved by the inevitable pondering: What happened to the optimism of 1991? Fests are deservedly making room for “The Event.”
