I watched a documentary today, Anna. This Russian filmmaker decided to make a film where he interviewed his daughter every year for 13 years and asked her the same questions each time, to see how her questions changed and, really, how they reflected both her growth and the state of her country. He started in 1980, when she was six, and asked her: What do you love the most? What do you hate the most? What are you scared of the most? What do you want the most?
It was quite interesting to see how Russia�s political turmoil affected this little girl. I mean, she went from being scared of witches and wanting a crocodile to being scared of war and wanting the new Russian political leader to lead them safely into the future, in the course of two years.
The girl wasn�t an incredibly willing participant in the film. She appeared shy and her father had to ask her to speak up and repeat answers from time to time. When she was 6 she didn�t even want to look at the camera, when she was 7 what she wanted most was to give the correct answer, when she was 8 she seemed to be mourning the death of the country�s leader, the same when she was 9. When she was 10 she was still afraid of war, but loved so many things, her family, reading, writing, playing. By the time she was 17 she was no longer scared of war; she was on her way to Switzerland to continue her studies and vowed that she would return and always be loyal to the homeland.
When the director asked his other daughter, who was probably about 6 years old, what the homeland was, she said it was good. He asked her if it was big, and she said no. He asked her to show him how big the homeland was, and she held her hands about seven inches apart, close to her chest.