Please note: screenings on October 25th and November 1st will have Dutch subtitles, while the screening on November 7th will have English subtitles.
Otets is a poignant artistic portrait of priest and freethinker Sergei Ovsiannikov (1952, Leningrad – 2018, Amsterdam), tracing the many layers of his life and personality – from his roots in an authoritarian homeland, through his emergence as a spiritual leader, to the fraught relationship he had with his children.
Sergei Ovsiannikov grew up in the Soviet Union in a strict communist family, where he wrestled with the ‘inner sniper guard’ — the fears and self-censorship instilled by the regime. In Amsterdam, he transformed a modest immigrant church into a thriving, multicultural community — a refuge for believers and non-believers from both East and West. Otets is about his search for freedom. Did he find it in the free West? And is liberation even possible for someone who carries dictatorship in their mind?
Many regarded Sergei as a living saint, a father figure who guided hundreds of people on their spiritual paths. Yet the same high standards he imposed on himself, he also placed upon his children. There was love between them, but the shadow of his own troubled past turned parenthood into a complex and at times painful task. It left deep marks, raising questions later in their lives about his way of raising them and the legacy of his past.
