Legend has it that at the end of the 1920s the Soviets built a research center in Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, with the aim of crossbreeding humans and apes. The theoretical being never saw the light of day, similar to the failure of Marx’s communist New Man ever to appear. Yet in the derelict wings of the Sukhumi institute man and monkey live together still, the former limited by the pressure of turbulent sociopolitical changes, the latter exposed to the merciless testing of new drugs and medical procedures. In a disputed territory on the shores of the Black Sea, permanently marked by the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent Georgian-Abkhaz conflicts, they share something in common: They have become dismal relics of a series of unsuccessful experiments from the past. This documentary essay ponders the relationship between humans and primates – the most similar of the mammals – in order to point out the destructive influence of ideological dogmas and the essential role of faith and ethics in all scientific research. KVIFF
DAFilms.com is powered by Doc Alliance, a creative partnership of 7 key European documentary film festivals. Our aim is to advance the documentary genre, support its diversity and promote quality creative documentary films.
Please choose one of following payment gates you'd like to pay through:
or subscribe to our online cinema
and watch over 2000 films in your browser:
By clicking this button, you declare that you are over the age of 18 and confirm both your consent to the DAFilms Terms and Conditions and that you have familiarised yourself with the [Principles of Personal Data Processing]. By making a payment, you are also requesting that the selected content be provided to you immediately upon confirmation of your order.
