Synopsis
"In chess terms, how would you describe what the authorities did today? Checkmate?" a foreign journalist asks. Garry Kasparov has just been detained for hours at an airport on his way to a demonstration. "They're throwing the pieces off the chessboard," Kasparov responds. The 45-year-old chess master has started a second life in politics. Foreign photographers repeatedly portray him in a chess pose, head in hands, staring at a fictitious chessboard. But the game is unfair, because his opponent is now Vladimir Putin.
The film reveals how the Kremlin systematically sabotages the activities of Kasparov and his party, The Other Russia. They're kept off the big TV stations, peaceful demonstrations are broken up by police, and Kasparov is put behind bars and denied legal council. "A dictatorship, an authoritarian regime," is what Kasparov calls Putin's presidency, and the film seems to confirm this.
In the Holy Fire of Revolution is a must-see for anyone who wants to know what Russia is really like today. Because, Kasparov claims, Moscow has become a display window with which Putin fools the West. Since the former KGB agent became president in 2000, the influence of the Federal Security Service has only grown. In Kasparov's mind, Russia is still anything but a real democracy.
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