Moscow : billionaires and homeless | M6 | Enquête Exclusive

Moscow is a megalopolis in full transformation. Less than twenty years after the collapse of the USSR, the Russian capital has moved from the black and white of the soviet era to the full color of the cash” age.Money flows abundantly along the giant Stalinesque arteries of this city with a population of 11 million. Jewelers, major fashion houses, and gleaming limos: the luxury goods market is exploding in Moscow with annual growth of 20%. Today, it’s the European city with the highest sales of Rolls Royces. Every week, new restaurants, new clubs appear, radically transforming the face of this once gray, sad city.These hip, very closed, places are the setting for the most prestigious and extravagant of parties. However, this dynamism has its perverse side effects: 80% of the country’s wealth is now concentrated in Moscow. It’s the most expensive city in the world. The gap between rich and poor has never been so wide. Those left by the wayside in the boom struggle for survival in the freezing streets of the Muscovite winter. It is said that the capital is home to 50,000 street children, a fact which the authorities are only now recognizing. Despite a heavy police presence, the crime rate is one of the highest in Europe. Property developers, greedy for profit, sometimes resort to strong-arm tactics to evict small owners in order to obtain fresh land for construction.To illustrate this changing aspect of Moscow, which runs on money, we follow people in their everyday lives. Through their patterns of life, work, travel and expression we see a glimpse of the real Moscow.”