Donetsk is the coal-mining area of Ukraine. Here most people work for low wages in the run down mines, while others make a lot of money. No matter which side of the social divide you are on, coming from Donetsk you will almost certainly be an opponent of the Orange Revolution and a fan of the local football team, Shakhtar Donetsk. Billionaire Akhmetov invests heavily in the club. Yet this sporting success funded by an Oligarch fortune only seems to highlight the wider social and political stagnation of the region. Off the pitch, the outlook appears bleak... The Other Chelsea humorously tells the story of discordant worlds of steady rise and unstoppable decay. Two parts of a post-soviet society meet in the football stadium and form a colorful social milieu which is firmly united by the belief to rather belong to a strong Russia than to the Western world. The world may change, yet the situation stays the same in Eastern Ukraine. A region is being trapped in a deadlock.
Jakob Preuss was born in 1975 in Berlin. Studied law in Cologne and Paris and European Studies in Warsaw. He performed his civilian national service in Nizhny-Novgorod/Russia, and worked in Moscow after his studies. Since 2002, alongside his activities as a filmmaker, he has regularly worked as a freelance consultant/observer for international organizations in the field of elections. He was employed as an expert on the CIS for the human rights organization REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS in 2007/08. The Other Chelsea is his feature-length debut film.
