2023-2024
New Year's Eve in Neukölln, Berlin. On this New Year's Eve, around 390 people around Berlin have been detained, with the majority of them arrested for violations related to weapons and explosive substances laws. 54 police officers were injured, including 30 from fireworks.
2019-2020
New Year's Eve with The Night Wolves. Russian motorcycle club that was founded around the Moscow area in 1989. The club has close ties to Vladimir Putin and a generally Russian nationalist sentiment. Putin has described them as his "friends" and appeared at their rallies, riding a Harley-Davidson trike. Yale University historian Timothy Snyder believes it serves "as a paramilitary and propaganda arm of the Putin regime."
2018-2019
New Year's Eve at the tropical island. It’s called full moon party and it’s an all-night beach party that originated in Hat Rin on the island of Ko Pha-ngan, Thailand. The party takes place on the night of, before, or after every full moon.
2017-2018
New Year's Eve in one of the most expensive restaurants in Moscow. The entrance fee for this New Year's party ranged from 69,000 to 199,000 rubles, and I was very curious about the kind of people willing to spend such amounts on New Year's Eve. Why don't they celebrate it somewhere else? In another country, a different climate? Perhaps these are the people who fell under sanctions and cannot leave the country? Maybe they are high-ranking officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs who cannot travel abroad? And who are all these women without partners? Husband-hunters? Some guests, avoiding publicity, discreetly handed me money just so I wouldn't film them, while those who came in search of husbands willingly stepped into the camera. A surreal party that could only take place in Russia.
2014-2015
New Year’s night is the most powerful holiday in Russia - people gather with their relatives and friends to meet zero hour and celebrate for the whole night. I’m not a man of family so in 2014 I decided to spent that nigh with whose who doesn’t have homes or families to gather with. I took my point-and-shot film camera and went to Moscow main railway station there tens of homeless awaited for New Year. Since then I was shooting every New Year’s Eve at different communities or events.
