The Charles T. McDowell Center for Critical Languages and Area Studies at The University at Arlington will present the 13th Annual Russian Documentary Showcase. This year’s showcase will feature The Red Soul, a film by Jessica Gorter about Stalinist attitudes in Russia today. After the documentary screening, there will be a Q&A session between the director and audience.

How can it be that in the year 2017 Joseph Stalin is still revered as a hero while at the same time he is known as a tyrant who caused the deaths of millions of innocent citizens? The Red Soul shows a world full of contradictions. In a mosaic of frank and intimate portraits of ordinary Russians both young and old, pride alternates with pain and shame. Nostalgic stories about how the country flourished under the communist ideal contrast sharply with painful memories of hunger, violence and betrayal and a deep-seated fear on the part of citizens to show their Motherland in an unfavorable light.