Ahead of the 2014 Olympic Games, the city of Sochi underwent drastic transformations. This nostalgic Soviet holiday resort, filled with gorgeous sanatoriums, had to become a modern Russian city. With no time to lose, everything and everyone had to give way in order to turn President Putin’s status project into a success.

Financial, economic, political and ecological limits are breached to make it happen. The 2014 Winter Games are on their way to becoming the most expensive Olympics ever. In Putin’s Olympic Dream director Hans Pool chronicles this transformation of ‘the Cannes of the Soviet Union’.

Pool shows crucial moments in the lives of all parties involved; the entrepreneurs, oligarchs, immigrants, athletes and activists. Everyone has a role to play in Putin’s business card of the new Russia.

Directed by Hans Pool
Duration: 80′
Year: 2013

Photographer Rob Hornstra and writer/filmmaker Arnold van Bruggen have been working together since 2009 to tell the story of Sochi, Russia, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. Together their images and text reveals a telling portrait of this complex region.

In a talk chaired by BBC Radio Current Affairs presenter Lucy Ash, Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen will present images from The Sochi Project and speak about the wider Caucasus region and its contrast with the glamour of the Olympic Games. They will also be discussing their approach to self-publishing.

Both based in the Netherlands, they have returned repeatedly to this region as committed practitioners of “slow journalism”. Over four years, they have established a solid foundation of research on, and engagement with, this small yet incredibly complicated corner of the world, documenting changes as it finds itself in the glare of international media.

The Sochi Project is a dynamic mix of documentary photography, film and reportage about a world in flux; a world full of different realities within a small but extraordinary geographic area.

All images © Rob Hornstra, courtesy Flatland Gallery NL|Paris.