Meeting Gorbachev

Directors: Werner Herzog, André Singer
Narrator: Werner Herzog
UK, USA, Germany, 2018, 92’, color, b&w
English, Russian, German, Polish with Turkish, English subtitle

Documentary directing phenomenon Werner Herzog had three conversations with Mikhail Gorbachev, the now 87-year-old former president of the Soviet Union. These “summits” opened a fresh door to some of the most significant happenings of the late twentieth century, from nuclear disarmament to the unification of Germany. “Meeting Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev,” says Herzog, “was a fascinating and enlightening experience. Here was a man who changed the course of the twentieth century and whose actions transformed the world I grew up in; yet in Moscow, I found a somewhat tragic and lonely figure, surrounded by people who blamed him for the loss of the Soviet Union and for not fulfilling the promises of perestroika and glasnost that he had hoped would improve their lives.”