I was born and raised in Saint Petersburg, Russia on the 25th of May 1996. After graduating high school, I moved to Poland to study cinematography at the Łódź Film School. Following my studies, I worked in commercial and music video productions before transitioning to text-based media. After Russia invaded Ukraine, I left Poland for Georgia, where part of my family resides. This move placed me in a country that, like Ukraine, has also experienced an invasion by Russia.

Given the circumstances of the past three years, Russian imperialism and aggression towards its neighbors have become deeply personal issues for me. While living in Georgia, I have met many people affected by the Russian invasion of 2008. This experience has driven me to explore the topic of the currently occupied Georgian territories and the realities of life of those living right around them, in the de facto Georgian territory, which resembles a no-man's land where no law or international convention is applicable.

The area, referred to by locals as the Zone of Fear, is a stretch of land adjacent to the line of contact between Georgia and the so-called South Ossetia. Those who live there face continuous risks of kidnapping, harassment, or robbery by Russian border guards stationed in significant numbers along the line of contact.

Those living near the line of occupation suffer from systematic expansion carried out by the Russian military authorities. Sometimes locals wake up to the Russian troops erecting “border” fences in their backyards and the villagers are forced to share their land with the occupants. Quite often the territories that are taken away by Russian border troops are the ones that are the most precious for the locals: their pastures, churches, cemeteries and sources of water.

The goal of the occupants is to make the locals feel disconnected from their roots and intimidated. Since 2008, there have been around three and a half thousand registered cases of illegal detention and imprisonment of Georgian citizens by Russian and South Ossetian authorities. My project tells the stories of some of these individuals who were detained by Russian border guards near the line of occupation and were subsequently held in detention centers and prisons in Tskhinvali.

@fiszandchips