Year: 2024
Director: Julia Loktev
Starring: Olga Churakova, Irina Dolinina, Sonya Groysman

chapter 1: The Lives of Foreign Agents (1hr 20min)
chapter 2: The Town Crazies (1hr)
chapter 3: The Holiday Special (55min)

(3hr 15min)

What begins as an intimate portrait of Russian independent journalists facing persecution by Putin’s regime takes a drastic turn when Russia starts a full-scale war in Ukraine and they are all forced into exile. The film offers a front row seat to how authoritarianism works and the lives of those who resist, which becomes all the more globally relevant every day.

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 regime - as it turns out, 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 reality show about frighteningly real reality, 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.