Producer – Robin Hessman

In Production

Russia’s Pepsi Generation tells the story of the last generation of Soviet children brought up behind the Iron Curtain. Just coming of age when the USSR collapsed, they witnessed the world of their childhood crumble and change beyond recognition. Is it liberating, devastating, or simply disorienting to find that the world you have been groomed to inherit suddenly doesn’t exist anymore?

Tracking the lives of a married couple and their childhood friends, the film shows how Communism’s crossover children are adjusting to their post-Soviet reality as the new Russian middle class.

Through a wealth of footage not often seen outside of Russia - private home movies, Soviet children’s programs, cartoons, and newsreels- Russia’s Pepsi Generation intercuts a rare and intimate view of the visual world of the past with verité contemporary stories of these 30-somethings in Moscow today.

The documentary is a co-production with Red Square Productions (US), Bungalow Town Productions (UK) and ITVS International, in association with American Documentary and YLE FST Finland. It has received support from the Ford Foundation, the LEF Foundation, the NEH, the Radziwill Documentary Fund, The Sundance Institute Documentary Fund, the WGBH Lab, IREX, and the Joukowsky Family Foundation.

The film is scheduled for broadcast on PBS in 2009 on the POV series.