General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Give Me Liberty (Гив ми либерти)

Give Me Liberty (Гив ми либерти) is a 2019 American comedy-drama directed by Kirill Mikhanovsky, following a young Russian-American medical transport driver in Milwaukee whose chaotic day spirals when he agrees to drive a group of elderly Russian immigrants to a funeral while also serving Tracy, a young Black woman with ALS.¹ The film premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and screened in the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival before a limited US theatrical release by Music Box Films.²

Key fact	Detail
Director and writers	Kirill Mikhanovsky (director, co-writer, editor); co-written and produced with Alice Austen¹
Setting and premise	One chaotic winter day in Milwaukee, where driver Vic shuttles disabled clients while trying to get his Russian relatives to a funeral¹^•³
Lead cast	Chris Galust as Vic; Lauren "Lolo" Spencer as Tracy; Maksim Stoyanov as Dima¹
Festival run	Sundance official selection 2019; Cannes Directors' Fortnight 2019; BAMcinemaFest centerpiece⁴
US release	Limited theatrical release August 23, 2019; streaming January 12, 2020; distributed by Music Box Films¹
Box office	$242,734 domestic, $382,084 international, $624,818 worldwide⁵
Critical reception	Metascore 82 ("universal acclaim"); Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 89% from 37 reviews⁶^•¹
Honors	John Cassavetes Award winner at the 2020 Independent Spirit Awards; National Board of Review Top Ten Independent Films⁷

Spoilers

Plot and characters

Vic, played by Chris Galust, is a young Russian-American in his twenties who drives a van transporting disabled people around his run-down part of Milwaukee. He lives with his senile grandfather and runs constantly late, because his workload would keep a whole team busy and each client needs particular care.⁸ On the day the film covers, an elderly Russian woman named Lilya has died, and Vic's grandfather and a group of her friends imperiously insist that he drive them to her funeral after their booked transport fails to arrive.²^•⁸

Among his regular passengers is Tracy (Lauren "Lolo" Spencer), a young woman with severe ALS from the African-American side of town, who is angered by Vic's delays and detours.³^•⁸ Also aboard is Dima (Maksim Stoyanov), a charming, intrusive small-time hustler from Brooklyn who attaches himself to the funeral party.² Among Vic's other passengers are an enormously fat man with a seemingly inexhaustible list of gripes, as well as grown-ups with profound neurological impairments, including one who is obsessed with Elvis and getting ready to perform "Rock Around the Clock" at a talent contest.³ When police-shooting-related protests close several city blocks to traffic, the van fills with passengers of two races and several generations, and the film follows the connections and acts of kindness that develop across cultural and racial divides.³

Production

Origins. Mikhanovsky was born in Moscow and immigrated to Milwaukee with his family at age 18. After the Soviet Union collapsed he worked a series of odd jobs, including medical transport driver for people with disabilities, the job on which the film is based; he has asked that the film be called personal rather than autobiographical.⁹^•¹⁰ He graduated from NYU's Graduate Film Program and made his first feature, Sonhos de Peixe (2006), which won the Critics' Week Award at Cannes.³

Shooting. Filming ran from mid-March through mid-April 2018 on various Milwaukee locations, among them apartments and houses in the city's Riverwest and Midtown neighborhoods.³ The film is a hybrid production mixing 16mm film with digital, shot by cinematographer Wyatt Garfield; Mikhanovsky used Super 16mm for what he regarded as aesthetically spiritual sequences.³ The production companies included Flux Capacitor Studios, The Space Program, Ursa Minor Independent, and Give Me Liberty Mfg.¹

Casting. Made on a shoestring budget, the film mixes professional and non-professional actors, including some with lived experience of their characters' conditions.¹¹ Spencer's casting was recognized with the 2019 Ruderman Family Foundation Seal of Authentic Representation for the authentic portrayal of a person with a disability.⁷

Release and reception

The film premiered at Sundance in January 2019, played as the centerpiece of BAMcinemaFest in June, and screened in Directors' Fortnight at Cannes.⁴^•² Music Box Films acquired US distribution rights shortly before the Cannes debut, and the film opened in limited release on August 23, 2019, with a US premiere at Milwaukee's Oriental Theatre on August 22.³^•¹² In Russia, where distributors deliberately kept the transliterated title Гив ми либерти, it was released on August 1, 2019, by A-One Films and earned $65,997.¹³

Critics responded strongly. On Metacritic the film scored 82, with 12 positive reviews and one mixed out of 13 counted.⁶ Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it "a jolt of a movie, at once kinetic and controlled" and "an anarchic deadpan comedy that evolves into a romance"; Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times praised its authenticity without self-congratulation.⁶ Jonathan Romney, writing in Film Comment, compared its relentless momentum to the Safdie brothers' Good Time and noted its blend of Russian manic humor with American cultural mixing.² The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus describes it as expertly juggling resonant themes and a madcap series of events to produce "a chaotic comedy with heart."¹

Awards

The film won the John Cassavetes Award, given to the best feature made for under $500,000, at the 2020 Film Independent Spirit Awards, shared by Mikhanovsky, Alice Austen, Val Abel, Walter S. Hall, Michael Manasseri, and George Rush.⁷ It was also named one of the National Board of Review's Top Ten Independent Films of 2019, won Best Film at the International Film Festival and Awards Macao and the In Spirit for Freedom Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival, and earned Independent Spirit nominations for Chris Galust (Best Male Lead), Lauren "Lolo" Spencer (Best Supporting Female), and Mikhanovsky's editing.⁷

Other works of the same name

The title has been used elsewhere. Give Me Liberty (1936) is a 22-minute historical drama short in which Patrick Henry makes a passionate argument for colonial independence, directed by B. Reeves Eason.¹⁴ The title also belongs to Russell Freedman's 2001 children's book Give Me Liberty!: The Story of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Brookhiser's 2019 history Give Me Liberty: A History of America's Exceptional Idea, and Eric Foner's widely assigned textbook Give Me Liberty! An American History.¹⁵^•¹⁶^•¹⁷

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026