Kostya Proletarsky

This animation film is a summary of what I as a human rights activists and my colleagues at the Rights Reporter Foundation have been fighting for in the last 15 years of our lives. The drama of Kostya and Irina touched me deeply, because it shows very clearly what is wrong in our societies when it comes to dealing with drug problems. Drugs can be harmful, but the policies to punish people who use drugs are deadly. And the tragedy of mothers of people with dependency all around the world is that they very often have nowhere else to turn for help but to the states, which instead of offering help, support and treatment, punishes their children, which very often leads to their deaths. With our short animation documentary we would like to show, that those drug users that are locked up and tortured, not only in Russia, but in many countries around the world, are in fact our own children and loved ones. It has been my dream to make this animation since 2009, when Anya Sarang gave us the audio recording she made with Kostya not long before his death, and when we Interviewed Kostya's mother Irina. Since then we wanted to turn the recordings into an animated documentary film. It was only in 2016 when we finally found the right person to do the animation, Lili Rontó. She is an acclaimed Hungarian graphic artist and painter, who made all the drawings, background and character design for the animation film by hand, frame by frame. I edited the film and made the sound design, and except for one song, we made the music together as well. It took us 3 years to finish the animation and now we can hardly wait to show it to audiences around the world.