Active Vocabulary, by Russian director Yulia Lokshina, turns an individual case into a broader reflection on education, freedom of expression, and contemporary forms of ideological control within the school system. The narrative centers on the experience of María Kalinitscheva, a young teacher who began her career in an isolated village in the Transbaikal region, thousands of kilometers east of Moscow. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, she made spontaneous anti-war remarks to a small group of students. One of them secretly recorded the conversation and shared it with their family and the school administration. Within days, Kalinitscheva received aggressive messages accusing her of betraying her country, while the authorities launched an investigation against her.
Facing a climate of escalating political coercion, reinforced by the inclusion of compulsory militaristic propaganda lessons in the curriculum, the teacher decided to flee to Germany and apply for asylum. In Berlin, she resumes her profession and transforms her own story into a pedagogical tool. Together with her students, she recreates the episode she experienced in Russia as a theatrical and civic exercise aimed at understanding what drives a pupil to denounce their teacher and what consequences censorship has on individual lives and the health of a democratic community. The young participants take on roles as either victims or informers while debating fear, persecution, and the right to think differently.
Lokshina, herself an émigré and a critic of the Russian education system, structures the documentary as a mosaic. The main narrative is interwoven with footage shot near Moscow just days before the outbreak of the war: a group of women protesting the construction of a new school on protected forest land, confronting workers and the police. Although the connections may seem indirect, both stories reveal how schools can become symbolic battlegrounds where control over society is contested.
Through a somber voice-over, the filmmaker includes personal memories of her own schooling in Russia and reflections on how authoritarian governments shape young minds to justify both external violence and internal repression. At the same time, she observes the German context and its preventive measures against indoctrination after Nazism, while introducing references to socialist-era artistic expressions that used the educational sphere as an ideological showcase. Visually, Active Vocabulary blends observational documentary, archival material, animation, and compositions that resemble abstract paintings but are in fact satellite images of disputed border zones. With this approach, Lokshina invites viewers to question who controls language, which voices are silenced, and why education is never neutral.
