
PBS NewsHour: Inside Putin's Russia
★ 10 · 2017 · 61m · Documentary · TV Movie
Correspondent Nick Schifrin and producer Zach Fannin take us inside Vladimir Putin's Russia, with an in-depth look at the resurgent national identity, the government's propaganda machine, the risk of being a Kremlin critic and much more.
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Desired Children
2016 · ★ 6.3
The life of Marie and Peter seems perfect, but their greatest wish remains unfulfilled: a family of their own. After several painfully failed attempts to have a child by natural means, Marie and Peter decide to try adoption in Russia. Carried by their longing and after many months of preparation and waiting, they set off to get to know their future daughter Nina in a children's home thousands of kilometers away from Germany. They still have no idea that they are only at the beginning of a tour de force against the Russian authorities – and they are facing the biggest challenge for their relationship, because while Marie and Peter are fighting for their future child, the question is: are we still pursuing the same goal? Each for himself – and especially as a couple?
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The Man Who Was Too Free
2017 · ★ 6.5
A documentary about Boris Nemtsov, a prominent figure of Russian political opposition and an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. Nemtsov was murdered in Moscow in February of 2015.
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Ukraine : la fin du monde russe ?
2022 · ★ 7
By invading this "state fiction" that is, according to him, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin takes up the motto of the tsars: "sovereign of all Russia, the great, the small and the white". The first would have Moscow as its capital, the second, kyiv, and the last, Minsk.
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Europe in Putin's hands
2024
The Kremlin's strategy consists of infiltrating positions of power throughout Europe and securing the services of individuals who are more or less aware of what is going on. The first part of this investigation looks at how European decision-makers fell headlong into the trap that had been set for them.
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Karenina & I
2017 · ★ 7
The actor Gøril Mauseth goes on a 11.000 kilometer travel with the Trans-Siberian to play Anna Karenina in a new language in Leo Tolstoj's Russia, discovering the language, and the reasons Tolstoj wrote what he wrote, changing her forever.
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Space Dogs
2019 · ★ 6.9
Laika, a stray dog, was the first living being to be sent into space and thus to a certain death. A legend says that she returned to Earth as a ghost and still roams the streets of Moscow alongside her free-drifting descendants. While shooting this film, the directors little by little realised that they knew the street dogs only as part of our human world; they have never looked at humans as a part of the dogs’ world.
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The Great Game: The Making of Spycraft
2024
In 1995, former KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin and ex-CIA Director William Colby collaborated in an unexpected way. They made a video game. The Great Game traces how both men rose to the tops of their fields following World War II, before falling out of favor with their respectives agencies — on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. For Kalugin, a growing discontent with the KGB’s treatment of Russians radicalized him against the institution. Meanwhile William Colby, an OSS operative and the CIA’s man on the ground in Vietnam, was fired by President Ford after testifying before Congress about controversial CIA programs like MKULTRA and CoIntelPro. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, both living on American soil, Colby and Kalugin played themselves in Spycraft, a multi-million dollar game that was among the most advanced of its time — and is now almost entirely forgotten.
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Lobanov
2021
The 2021 Duma elections made Mikhail Lobanov a recognizable Moscow politician. The 37-year-old mathematician, lecturer at the Moscow State University, has long been involved in social activities: ten years ago he opposed political agitation at the university, participated in the creation of an independent association of university employees to protect their rights, and was almost fired for his activism. In 2021 elections, Lobanov ran for the Communist Party (he is not a member of the party, calls himself a democratic socialist) and waged a powerful grassroots campaign against the pro-government candidate, TV presenter Yevgeny Popov.
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Politzek, the voices that challenge the Kremlin
2026
In Russia, criticizing the war in Ukraine or Vladimir Putin’s regime has become a crime. Thousands of ordinary citizens are being arrested, tried, and imprisoned. They are called “Politzek”: political prisoners. Filmed clandestinely over the course of more than a year, Politzek gives a platform to those who, despite the fear, continue to speak out against Putin’s repressive Russia. Through the intersecting stories of a teenager sentenced to five years in prison for criticizing the government on social media, a young artist jailed for placing anti-war stickers, a human rights activist, and two theater directors facing Kafkaesque trials, the film unveils the machinery of state repression in Russia. With rare footage, broken yet unyielding voices, this is a story of silenced resistance.
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The Trial: The State of Russia vs Oleg Sentsov
2017 · ★ 3.4
August 2015, a courtroom in Rostov-on-Don. A man is peering through the bars of his cage, his eyes reveal that his nerves are about to snap. Today he will be handed down a sentence to which he must submit: 20 years’ imprisonment in Siberia for terrorism. The man is Oleg Sentsov, a film director and Maidan activist born in Simferopol in the Ukraine. He is charged with leading an anti-Russian terrorist movement and having planned attacks on bridges, power lines and a monument of Lenin. Sentsov defends himself, courageously and without flinching. He responds to the verdict with an emphatic denial of his crimes and instead accuses the accusers themselves ...
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Pussy Riot: Rage Against Putin
2023 · ★ 8.2
Pussy Riot make a comeback after a long absence to stand with Ukraine. Their story and their struggle are told through archival footage and interviews with the group’s members.
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