Maidan

Belarusian director Sergei Loznitsa returns to his documentary roots for this mesmerising account of the events that transformed Ukraine between November 2013 and February 2014. Positioning his camera on Kyiv's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (or Independence Square), Loznitsa allows the scene to unfold before him, as a carnival atmosphere surrounds the protests against pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. However, the mood changes alarmingly as the backlash is unleashed and the camera is forced to move twice from its static moorings, to dodge projectiles and record the police firing on the crowds. The switch to a high-rise vantage point does nothing to reduce the intimacy or immediacy of the footage, which feels like captured life rather than reportage. Indeed, there is something painterly about the digital imagery, and the sound mix is equally inspired, as the fervour of patriotic and parodic songs gives way to the howl of ordnance and the shouts and screams of the defiant and the terrified.