In my childhood, Chechnya was the first real war I had heard of. It was happening as I went to school. Mutilated soldiers were coming home, and we had all sorts of myths about the dangerous Chechen separatists floating around. In 1999, four apartment block bombings across Russia led the ex-FSB director and then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to blame the Chechen separatists and start the second Chechen War. A move that eventually earned him his presidency. There is substantial evidence that the bombings were organised by FSB precisely for that purpose.

Imagine you are born in the first years of Soviet Russia. At only three years old, you escape the horror and bloodshed of early empire via a gruelling trip to the USA. Your Jewish parents never teach you Russian, and you grow up working at their news stand while the great depression ravishes the country. You read a lot of sci-fi and study arduously, but before you hit the legal drinking age – the world goes to war. You complete your master's degree in chemistry in 1941 and find yourself working at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. Would you not feel overwhelmingly powerless to change this morbid, violent and negligent world you were born into?

I was walking around the late summer Tbilisi the other day. It was my favourite kind of weather - the early autumn onset was showing. Shadows became a little darker, the light a tad warmer, and the temperature dropped to below 70°F (20°C (293°K)), which has the same effect here as in SoCal - people start wearing puffer jackets and avoid going outside. It was a rare occasion for me, too, just walking around central Tbilisi and running small errands with no care in the world.

Svoboda means freedom in Slavic languages. It's one of those rare words that sounds the same across most of those languages. It is spelled and pronounced similarly in Roman scripts, such as Polish (swoboda) and Czech (svoboda). Moreover, it is spelled the same (свобода) in most Cyrillic languages, such as Bulgarian, Ukrainian and Russian.

"Democracy is essential to a successful society and tomorrow we are having our very first election. We better not fuck it up."

Ah, the life of a war refugee. Trying to find your footing again after everything you've been through. I found myself in Bali with a burning desire to finally write that damn script. I kept myself busy with acting classes and other shenanigans until I stumbled upon Lampu - a local burn in Bali. But as it turns out, the Ukrainian community wasn't too happy with it. They said it was too Russian-centric and not marketed well enough to outsiders. And then there was this whole fuss about the winter party, Kholodok. They were pissed that it wasn't canceled after the war broke out. It was just one criticism after another, man.

So here I am, on the run again, my life taking another inexplicable turn. I've witnessed firsthand how the line between order and chaos is fragile and easily broken. In a blink, you're stripped of your power, and the world as you knew it crumbles.

So there we were, picking up the scattered pieces, stitching life back together. Pops kicked off a new venture, and I set out on a journey of my own, making a flick and dabbling in all sorts of stuff. Somewhere between pissed off and inspired by my Russian roots, I decided to make a film about a cat who lit a fire in me. And so began this wild trip through art and production.

In the swirling chaos of post-Soviet Russia, I was raised with the understanding that the government was an entity so alien and detached from our daily grind that there was no bloody point in mingling. Instead, we tackled the relentless torrent of challenges that flooded our days, never seeking aid from the faceless authorities. This way of thinking sculpted a generation of souls who believed that as long as they didn't rattle the government's cage, they would be left to wander in their own existential wilderness.