Shortlisted for the 2026 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
How do you keep fighting for the truth when your country declares you an outlaw? What begins
as an intimate epic about young Russian independent journalists fighting Putin’s regime takes a
drastic turn when Russia invades Ukraine and they must choose whether to flee their country. A
front row seat to how authoritarianism works and the lives of those who resist.
Soviet-born American filmmaker Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet, Day Night Day Night) came
to Moscow in 2021 to make a film about independent journalists being declared “foreign agents”
by Putin’s regimet, just four months before Russia started a full-scale war in
Ukraine. With her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show host at TV Rain, Russia’s last remaining
independent news channel, Loktev brings us into a community of sharp, warm and funny young
women speaking truth to power as they face increasing threats. Loktev filmed in Moscow during
the first week of the full-scale invasion, as the journalists tried to counter Russian propaganda
and report the truth on the war, until all independent media was shut down and they were
forced to flee the country. Structured in five chapters, feeling like a cross between a Russian
novel and a frighteningly real reality show, Loktev’s film is an extraordinary historic
record of a country on the verge of fascism and an immersive and intimate inside view of the
opposition in an authoritarian society, which becomes all the more globally relevant every day.
In Russian, with English subtitles.
This screening will have two 10 minute intermissions.
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