Radio Liberty

A girl from St. Petersburg walks around protest-ridden Moscow, talking to riot police and believing that sooner or later they will go over to the side of the demonstrators. An 18-year-old student of a St. Petersburg college introduces herself as Alice and tells about herself that from the age of four she lived in an orphanage and in foster families. In Moscow, Alisa, for whom this is the first rally in her life, walks along the police cordons and looks under the OMON helmet. "Under the mask you can't see, are you even human?"

How Lyusia Stein - a graduate of VGIK and a municipal deputy of Moscow - went to work for Ksenia Sobchak's campaign headquarters.

A portrait of Richard Semashkov, a rapper famous for anti-liberal songs and friendship with Prilepin and other "patriotic" artists.

This movie is about children who live every day with a reminder of war and enemies. This happens in today's Russia, in the city of Belaya Kalitva in the Rostov region. Teens take Cossack education.

The rally in support of Alexei Navalny was initially called for in the center of Moscow, on Lubyanskaya Square, but the authorities blocked all approaches to it. Then some of the demonstrators went to the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center, where Navalny was. The police hunted them, cutting off individual groups and using force. Over one and a half thousand people were detained. Two days later, on February 2, the court changed Navalny's suspended sentence to a real one - two years and eight months in prison. On the same evening new protests began.

Almost three decades after his grisly killing in Germany, the murder of the exiled Iranian entertainer Fereydoun Farrokhzad remains officially unsolved. But an investigation by RFE/RL's Persian-language service, Radio Farda, has uncovered documents that point to Iran's intelligence services. And a former Iranian spy has revealed a possible suspect in the 1992 slaying of the outspoken critic of Iran's hard-line Islamic regime.

A 12-year-old girl, Tasia, from the village of Tomsino in the Pskov Region wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin asking her to help her mother, a nurse in a local hospital. The villagers didn’t like this, where Tasya and her mother had moved shortly before that - they say, you need to "work, not ask." Tasha began to be poisoned, and an ex-girlfriend met her online under the guise of a young man and lured naked photographs.

Among those who took to the streets of Russian cities in recent months are people of various political views. This is the story of a young Russian nationalist.

On April 23, after 11 days of mass protests, Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan resigned. About how the opposition led by Nikol Pashinyan won - the film “Last Day”.

After three teenagers died of an overdose, artist and activist Katrin Nenasheva organized a self-help group called "Teens and Cats". In it, teenagers share their difficulties and support each other. Initially, at the meetings of the group, they talked about how to cope with drug addiction, later to this was added a discussion of mental illnesses, bullying, violence, selfharma.

A police sergeant of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” comes to Moscow to receive the Donbass Volunteer badge as a reward for participating in the hostilities in eastern Ukraine on the side of pro-Russian separatists.

The Great Cross procession is considered the largest and most difficult pilgrimage route in Russia. Many participants in the course believe that if you go this way with pure thoughts and a specific request to God, then it will be fulfilled. The main character of the film Leonid also has a request - an intimate dream. And there is a feeling that for him this religious procession is the last.

Near Moscow at the end of April they took the Reichstag by storm. More precisely, a copy of it - during the reconstruction of the battle in the Patriot Park... Hundreds of people - in uniform, with weapons and equipment from the Second World War - ran through mud and puddles to the Reichstag model built near the forest...

Ufa tattoo artist covers traces of violence with flowers.

Zakhar is 7 years old, and his brother Procopius is 9. Each of the brothers already has its own deer and its own tundra for wandering. Previously, children born into a nomad family at this age were almost forcibly taken away to study in a boarding school on the mainland. And they rarely returned to the parental home. Trying to preserve the traditions of the nomadic peoples in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the authorities decided to revive the practice of "nomadic schools" that disappeared in Russia in the 30s. That’s how the 23-year-old Nelli Andreevna falls into the Zharkov family in order to explain to Zakhar and Prokopy what a mathematician is needed in life and who Vladimir Putin is.

When Maria Alekhina and other members of the Pussy Riot group were tried for an action in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Orthodox activist Dmitry Enteo strongly advocated punishing the girls. Now Alekhina and Enteo spend a lot of time together. Last week, with activists from The Other Russia, they went to the Ministry of Justice to conduct a public Bible reading — as a demonstration of their constitutional right to read the Holy Scriptures (and any other books) in public — without permission from officials.

On the 11th of November 2018 the elections were held in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic. One of those who came to vote is a former locksmith Alexander Zaslavsky, a participant under the call sign "Old" in the battles in 2014 and 2015.

After the start of mass protests in Belarus, demonstrators also appeared in Moscow - at the Belarusian embassy.

The tape is dedicated to writer, publicist, long-term employee and editor-in-chief of the Russian service of Radio Liberty Peter Vail. Filming took place in New York, Prague and Venice. The film uses rare archive photo, video and audio materials. Vail's texts are read by Alexander Filippenko. Peter Weil died in December 2009. In 2014 he would have turned 65.