L'arbre aux branches coupées -- Film Description:
"Post-Soviet Russia is a dangerous jungle of failed free markets, official corruption and dashed hopes. In this chaotic environment, the weakest prey are Russias senior citizens, cast-offs struggling to survive and maintain their ideals. Pascale Ferland takes us inside the daily lives and the innermost thoughts of two Moscow seniors, two men named Alexei, who are now in their eighties and who have been committed supporters of the Revolution their entire lives. Both men take refuge from their difficult living conditions through art, painting canvases of their remarkable visions of the world. Barely eking out a living, alone in a tiny room, Alexei Ivanovitch conjures the vital force of nature that drives life in his swirling, obsessively detailed canvases. Alexei Yakovlevitch, former colonel in the Red Army, now scrambles to collect paint and brushes to produce commemorative portraits of people and events from his fading past. Ripe with equal measures of loss, longing and joyous self-expression, Tree With Severed Branches is an eloquent ode to hope and imagination."
-- David McIntosh

Source:
"Hot Docs" Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. http://www.hotdocs.ca/.