Production
Documentary film that describes the September 1999 Russian apartment bombings as a terrorism act committed by Russian state security services. Based on book "Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within" by Yuri Felshtinsky and Alexander Litvinenko.
The extraordinary story of a man who risks everything to preserve freedom of speech in Russia. In December 2021 Dmitry Muratov is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He is the editor-in-chief of Russia’s only independent newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. Six of his journalists have been murdered, after their reports displeased the state. In February 2022 Russia invades Ukraine. In early March, using the cover of a documentary film festival, Muratov secretly negotiates free passage for forty journalists with the Latvian government. Then he returns to Moscow to look after his paper and its remaining staff. To this day, he refuses to leave Moscow, whatever the pressure on him and his team. "Putin stands for death. I stand for life."
Putin had been preparing his country for the big war long before it started. Since 2012, a series of repressive laws were passed, labelling everyone who publicly disagreed with the official narrative as „foreign agent“. In these circumstances, a group of independent Russian media and activists are trying to resist and continue their work. Right after the invasion their work becomes virtually impossible. Shot during one decisive year, before and after the invasion, the new film by fearless filmmaker Askold Kurov (The Trial - The State of Russia vs. Oleg Sentsov) portrays the last defenders of democracy in Russia and gives a glimpse of hope for another future.
By the beginning of the war in Chechnya, the legendary Major Izmailov worked in the military registration and enlistment office of the city of Zhukovsky. Having buried the first conscript who died during the storming of Grozny, he refused to send 18-year-old children to death and went to Chechnya himself to take out the prisoners. And he freed at least 174 people. The film uses a rare chronicle of the Chechen wars from the private archives of mothers who were looking for their sons in Chechnya, as well as negotiating officers from the working group on the exchange of prisoners. For the first time, the heroes of the film tell in detail what they had to go to to free people from captivity on both sides.
15 years ago, our colleague, journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was killed. Today, for the first time, we are telling the whole story of the investigation that we have been conducting all these years.
After twenty years in power, Vladimir Putin continues to implement his geopolitical strategy with Russia’s comeback on the big stage of world politics. He already announced his ambitions in 2007 – and still, it seems like the western governments were hit completely unprepared. What is behind this repeat of the Cold War?
"School Number One" is a docudrama based on the terrorist attack that took place 15 years ago on September first, in a school in the small Northern Osetian town of Beslan. The three-day siege and it's horrible aftermath. Who is responsible for the incredibly high death toll among the hostages? What provoked the bloody operation to free the hostages 52 hours into the siege? Who answers for the interrupted negotiations, and how are former hostages and their families coping today? What political ramifications did this act of terror leave in its wake. Who benefited from it the most, and how did it affect the every day lives of Russia as we know it today?
This film is a unique historical document, a cast of the tragedy. This film is about the disaster that happened to Russia and filmed in real time. Chronicle of a diving country.
