At St Petersburg 2003 Documentary Full Fix: Baltic Sun

The documentary does not open with sweeping orchestral music. Instead, it opens with the ambient, chaotic sound of a crowd near Palace Square. The camera acts as a flaneur, drifting through the streets. We see the city not as a polished tourist brochure, but as a living, breathing organism still shaking off the grit of the post-Soviet nineties. There are billboards for newly arrived Western brands—Nokia, Coca-Cola—peeling slightly in the damp air, juxtaposed against the bullet-scarred facades of the Winter Palace.

Let’s assume you find a dusty AVI file from a torrent seeded in 2007. Is it worth the download?