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Film Critic at Meduza. Former editor-in-chief at Art of Cinema magazine, author of several books about movies, including "Bad Russians"

I was scheduled to deliver a lecture on February 24, 2022. I woke up very early so I could get to the airport, and read that the war had started. I was among those who didn’t believe that it would happen — I think we were probably the majority. In that instant, it became clear to me that everyone would have to start censoring themselves very soon, and I immediately decided that before the censorship began, I was going to write what I really thought on Facebook.

I think that everyone experienced a sense of helplessness that day. A complete loss of agency. But I’m a product of the 1990s, a period when Russian society was moving, on the contrary, toward agency. I’m used to feeling like an adult, a person who chooses his own trajectory.

Therefore, I had a situational, simple answer to the question "what is to be done?" We have to do something. You can’t just freeze like a rabbit in front of a snake. But it’s also impossible to pretend that everything was the same as before, that’s a trap. So I flew to Samara, but I said to the people running the event, "Our topic has changed, I’ll go on stage and I’m going to talk about the war. I can’t talk about trends in film today, really sorry". I have to give credit where it’s due: they didn’t object.

I gave my speech and I had no doubt that the people in the lecture hall agreed with me — it’s always possible, though, that that was an illusion. Then I thought: if no one in this randomly assembled audience, who know me primarily as some guy from TV, wants to spit on me, then that means that viewers of my YouTube channel, who know me well, are probably prepared for a more detailed and specific conversation.

That morning in the airport on the way back, I started calling around to filmmakers, asking who wanted to record a little anti-war manifesto with me. We did it, in the end, even though many refused. No one, however, was saying that Putin was doing everything right.

I wasn’t planning to leave. But after our video, I started receiving threats. My children were threatened. In a very ugly fashion. It was obvious that the people doing this knew which buttons to press. Then our Israeli friend called and said, "Listen, I can’t fully vouch for the accuracy of this information, but we’ve heard that mobilization might be announced on March 8. If that’s true, you and your oldest son won’t be allowed out of the country". I started to think that we really needed to leave for a while.

Right at that time, the director Vitaly Mansky called and invited me to the Artdocfest in Riga. There were no flights to Europe, but you could get to Riga on the ground. I thought to myself: if the festival will also issue invitations to my wife and children, we can leave without arousing suspicion. We’ll see what happens after that, maybe we’ll return to Moscow. The thought didn’t cross our minds that we’d be leaving forever.

My mom and my younger brother Matvey took us to the train station. They rang the doorbell, we opened the door, and they were absolutely pale. "Have you seen this? Has it been here long?" I stepped out and saw that the Latin letter Z (the unofficial symbol in support of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine) was painted on my door. That was the first moment that I said to myself: "wow".

The second time happened the next day. After spending four hours at two borders, Russia and Estonia,

I turned on my phone and realized that I was being watched. We’d decided to tell the Russian border guard that we were taking the kids to France, to see their grand-mother. We weren’t intending to go there — we were all going to Riga. But I hadn’t even reached Riga when my friend forward-ed an announcement from an anonymous pro-Putin Telegram channel, that said "Anton Dolin fled to France". The story about France came directly from the border guard’s booth. There’s no other possible source.

I don’t believe in the multiverse. I don’t believe that things can be any way other than what they are. People torture themselves endlessly, asking "What if we’d taken a different fork in the road?" Life may not be predetermined, but there are choices you shouldn’t gamble on. One of my favorite books is "Jacques the Fatalist and His Master" by Denis Diderot — it’s all about that. The realization that I made a decision and now I have to deal with its consequences helps me a lot.

My life changed a lot less than reality around me. I think a lot about the absurd. 2024 was a year of absurdist theater — Yorgos Lanthimos’ "Kinds of Kindness" is just one example. The previous rise of absurdism in culture described the onset of Nazism. The absurd is always connected with alienation, when there are many people around you, but you’re alone. It’s always been easy for me to identify with Kafka’s heroes, with Camus’ stranger, even though I myself am not an outcast, and sometimes I’m even a real public favorite. But this is an internal impression, there’s nothing to do about it.

I never felt like I belonged in Russia. Like among film critics, for example. I have impostor syndrome, I’m an autodidact. I remember how outraged everyone was when I praised Fyodor Bondarchuk’s film "Stalingrad" — for Russian film critics, it was a badge of honor to say what a piece of crap that film was. I very often realize that almost everyone I listen to, read, and respect thinks differently than I do. This feeling of solitude has its own honor and joy.

But now, traveling the globe, I meet people everywhere who think like me. I’ve met them in Detroit, in Ljubljana, in Chisinau. 400 people came to my lecture in Chisinau. And I’ve never even been there before. They asked me what my connection is to Moldova. I unexpectedly recalled that my great-grandfather was born in Bessarabia somewhere. Someone brought me the Jewish encyclopedia of Moldova, and I was in there. I was thinking, "Gosh, this is absolutely foreign to me", and then it turned out that no, it wasn’t foreign. The Moscow in-group, famous critics — it suddenly turned out that all of that was totally not my thing.

I’m not on a quest in the spirit of Don Quixote. I’m traveling the world in search of my people. Not people who are against Putin — it’s hard to say who’s against Putin — but people who, in addition to being against Putin, also, for example, love Cervantes.

I’m generally obsessed with chivalric novels, though I only like one kind of knight — the wandering kind. The ones who set out in uncomfortable armor for the sake of something impossible. That kind of endless wandering interests me. Of course, it’s good to have your own Camelot or La Mancha behind you, whatever yours is. I have no Camelot. But I like the feeling of the road.