Orange Winter

Ukraine-born, American-based filmmaker Andrei Zagdansky's deeply frustrating "documentary essay" examines the Orange Revolution, a series of protests following Ukraine's 2004 presidential election, which was undermined by pervasive evidence of corruption, fraud and organized voter misconduct. Zagdansky's failure to systematically lay clear, linear historical groundwork for the events of late 2004 and 2005 is obviously deliberate, but without it the film is unenlightening to anyone not already conversant with the history of modern Ukraine and the details of this hotly contested election.

Part of the USSR since 1921, Ukraine became an independent state 70 yea...