As the USSR collapses, 'My Perestroika' follows its upheaval on five Russian children coming of age.

What was it like for a generation of Soviet schoolchildren to

confront the brave new post-Soviet world? Director Robin Hessman, who

lived as a film student in Moscow in the 1990s and later was a

producer on the Russian "Sesame Street," spent five years recording

the lives of five Moscow schoolmates from the last Iron Curtain

generation as they passed through glasnost and perestroika and

emerged, in various states of disillusion, on the other side.

In some ways, especially in its use of then-and-now home-movie

footage and period newsreels, her documentary "My Perestroika" is a

companion piece to Michael Apted's "Up" series.

Olga is a single mother working for a billiard table rental company;

Ruslan, once a punk rock icon, became fed up with the

commercialization of the music business and now plays for spare

change in the subways; Andrei, who still regards himself as

anti-establishment, runs a chain of high-end menswear stores. …