"I have been following the story of the Moscow bombings from the very first day.

The way it was presented in the media felt wrong to me right from the start. The blasts were unprecedented in many ways. Russia hadn't known terrorism on such a scale. What gave this human tragedy a particularly eerie cast was that no one was remotely interested in taking „credit“ for it, unlike most terrorist attacks. I wasn't convinced that it was the Chechens. There were hardened fighters among the Chechens; there were hostage-takers. But this somehow felt different. And then came Ryazan: the terrorists hunted by the police turned out to be FSB agents.

As a citizen, I was furious at the lack of a proper investigation into what seemed to me a matter of absolute priority for our country. As a film-maker, I felt a powerful impulse to identify with the survivors and relatives of the victims. I tried to imagine how they felt, suspecting their own government - the smiling President - of the attack that had shattered their lives. Yet I also knew that most survivors in Moscow were afraid to talk about their suspicions. Then I learned about two sisters in America whose mother was killed at 19 Gurianova St.

* * * *

"I decided to become a film director because of Tarkovksy. I would skip classes and watch his movies wherever I could find them playing in my native Leningrad. Tarkovsky was semi-forbidden. And yet there was nothing political in his films. Unlike some other East-bloc countries, Russia didn't have the tradition of political dissent in the arts. You were a dissident if you made a film about love - not for the motherland, but simply about love. When I made my first film, a documentary, my friends thought that I had betrayed the High Art vows of my youth. I went on to make drama, but the apolitical dreams of the Soviet "Belle Epoque" had to give way to imperfect reality, imperfectly but inevitably described by the language of politics.

In Disbelief, I reconciled the documentary and drama for myself. And not just stylistically: the camera lets the main protagonists live, not just answer questions, or illustrate a voice-over narration. There was something else. As a director, I was no longer afraid not to entertain. Such is the nature of a spectacle that the audience is always right, and it has the right to say „boring“ to an interpretation of the most worthy subject. This time, it is because I felt that the drama is so deep, and that my empathy with the victims is genuine, the question of entertainment as opposed to worthy seriousness was suspended. I knew there was a chance of touching people's hearts and minds directly, without begging for their patience, or pleading with their sense of political responsibility. I learned the classic meaning of tragedy: through a documentary.

I was developing a feature film. But I decided to make this documentary first. Because I thought it couldn't wait. Because more time ticking away suddenly felt like more human suffering. More unanswered questions vital to the fate of the proud nuclear power called Russia. Fewer chances for stability and dignity in this small world.

Andrei Nekrasov