Oleksiy Horbunov

After the premiere, the theatre group gathers in a bar to celebrate. However, the cheerful gathering is interrupted by a drunken Soviet officer. He insists on selling a can of petrol. However, when he senses the awkwardness, the hidden hatred, the cowardice, the timidity of the people there, he begins to enjoy the situation with his intrusiveness. When he takes his pistol out of its holster, things start to get crazy. The people in the bar suddenly become “freedom fighters” against the Russian occupation.

Mathieu, a member of the French institute in Irkutsk, is arrested overnight by the Russian authorities. Imprisoned and accused of sexual abuse on his own daughter, he realises he is a victim of a Kompromat. With the help of the FSB, someone has built up a case to frame him. Isolated, he has no one to turn to. Proving his innocence is impossible: the only solution is to escape.

A loose remake of “12 Angry Men, “12 is set in contemporary Moscow where 12 very different men must unanimously decide the fate of a young Chechen accused of murdering his step-father, a Russian army officer. Consigned to a makeshift jury room in a school gymnasium, one by one each man takes center stage to confront, connect, and confess while the accused awaits a verdict and revisits his heartbreaking journey through war in flashbacks.