Liberation: The User’s Guide

Residents at the Tinskoi Psychoneurological Institute in Siberia have modest dreams: to find love and have children-to live independently and pay their own bills. But many may never attain even these simple goals.

LIBERATION: THE USER’S GUIDE is a striking vérité documentary that follows the long struggle of two inmates at the institution. Like many of their fellow residents, they have spent much of their lives here-abandoned by their mothers, raised with little access to vital therapy and programs, and caught in an impersonal bureaucracy that prevents them from taking control of their own lives.

The film follows Yulia and Katia as they fight to regain their civil capacity, the legal standing that would give them independence.

LIBERATION: THE USER’S GUIDE offers a rare and intimate look inside a system that imprisons people with mental illness and cognitive disabilities, forcing them to meet nearly impossibly high standards for release.