Born in the USSR: 35 Up

Born in the USSR: 35 Up (2026) is the fifth chapter of Sergei Miroshnichenko's long-running documentary series — watch it online on iFILM. The project began in 1989, filming twenty children from across the republics of the Soviet Union, and has returned every seven years since.

At seven, these children were filmed against a collapsing empire. At fourteen, in the chaos of the 1990s. At twenty-one and twenty-eight. Now at thirty-five — the midpoint the series has been quietly building toward — the subjects are adults shaped by histories that no longer exist in the form they lived them. Some stayed in the countries where they were born; others ended up across borders that did not exist when they first appeared on screen. What gives the film its particular weight is duration: by this installment, the viewer carries the accumulated memory of who these people were at every previous stop, and that layered knowledge turns each current frame into something the footage alone cannot explain. Stream Born in the USSR: 35 Up (2026) online on iFILM.