“Painting is better than politics,” the artist Yuri Larin liked to repeat. The son of the famous revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin, who was executed in 1938, he experienced first-hand the horror of totalitarianism, so he saw the posthumous rehabilitation of his father as one of the main tasks of his life. Still, Yuri Nikolaevich’s main vocation remained fine art, and it was in this that he managed to leave a significant mark. The documentary biography, written by Dmitry Smolev, combines a study of Larin’s work, the circumstances of the contemporary art scene, and a family saga. Painting here is not isolated into a separate, autonomous world, but is inscribed in the broad context of the era, the echoes of which are heard to this day. Dmitry Smolev is a Moscow art critic, journalist, and editor.