Russian.teens.3.glasnost.teens -

But the film? The film survived. Because teens, Russian or otherwise, always remember the year the lies stopped and the questions began.

Silence. The camera holds on the teacher’s face – not anger, but confusion. He doesn’t have a party directive for this.

Lena lights a cigarette. "They told us to be the future. But the future keeps changing its uniform."

Viktor laughs, dry and bitter. "Next year, they say we can vote for real. Maybe even leave the country." Russian.Teens.3.Glasnost.Teens

A teacher, red-faced, pounds the podium. "Comrades, the West wants to destroy our values!"

No adults. Just sweat, electric guitars, and a crowd of teens slamming into each other. The band, Glasnost Kids (formed that morning), plays a cover of "Should I Stay or Should I Go" – lyrics translated badly, passionately wrong.

– "openness" – had been Gorbachev’s promise two years ago. Now, in the spring of '88, the air smells of thawing permafrost and printer ink from underground samizdat magazines. The teens in this film don't want to storm the Winter Palace. They want jeans. They want rock music. They want to know why their history textbooks have chapters being rewritten as they study them . Scene 3: The School Auditorium But the film

Moscow, 1988. Arbat Street, 11:47 PM.

"We were the last Soviets. And the first Russians who could ask 'why?' without waiting for an answer." Epilogue note (present day): Lena became a journalist. Viktor died in the chaotic ‘90s, a street fight over a leather jacket. Dmitri emigrated to Canada, but named his daughter Arina – after a grandmother who never saw the Berlin Wall fall. The boom box is now in a Riga museum.

Viktor, now in a cowboy shirt from the black market, screams into the mic: "We don’t know what comes next!" Silence

From the back row, a boy named Dmitri raises his hand. Not to answer. To question.

This is Glasnost.Teens .