Institute History
Description
A fatal bomb blast in a Moscow apartment building ignites a fury of questions about terrorism, shadow politics, and post-Soviet intrigue in Andrei Nekrasov's astonishing Disbelief—a film as much about the high art of high-level deception as it is about violence and sabotage. The September 9, 1999, bombing of a nine-story working-class apartment complex was quickly blamed as the work of Chechnyan terrorists. But was it? Or did Russian authorities deflect their own culpability in the apartment bombing to the Chechnyans to heighten national fear and hysteria and justify their subsequent massive military attacks on the Chechnyan state?
Deploying all the suspense and drama of a sophisticated murder mystery, Nekrasov mines the ambiguous facts and amorphous assumptions surrounding what was, at the very least, a human tragedy and, at most, an act of calculated mayhem. With riveting visual material and a sensational original score, Nekrasov has created one of the most compelling and captivating films of the year.