On 15 May 2012, the Russia 1 TV channel will present Metropolitan Hilarion’s film “Unity of the Faithful.” Its release is timed for the fifth anniversary of the important historical event of the restoration of canonical communion between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. The Act of Canonical Communion signed on 17 May 2007 put a full stop to the history of the Russian Civil War and marked the end of the painful and dramatic estrangement that had lasted many decades.
The film gives the story of the road that the hierarchs of both Church went along towards this epoch-making event, of settling the differences and of blunting the contradictions, and of their exerted efforts. The film contains unique recollections and impressions of participants in the negotiations, among them His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, Archbishop Mark of Berlin, Germany and Great Britain, Archpriest Nikolai Balashov and Alexander Lebedeff, who served as secretaries of the commissions for restoration of canonical unity.