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Browse 49 movies from RFE/RL
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?"
Aug 2019
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.
Jan 2019
A film about Misha Bo, a famous young blogger, poet and photographer in St. Petersburg. In 2017, Misha was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. In February 2020, Misha passed away. He did not lose his fortitude and fought to the end.
Aug 2017
The documentary film explores a top-secret Russian government experiment involving the recruitment and deployment of prisoners to the war in Ukraine. This investigation vividly exposes the brutal cruelty of the Russian military machine and the Kremlin’s disregard for legality and human rights. The film reveals previously unknown details of one of the most ruthless and cynical military projects of the 21st century, based on the analysis of several hundred Ministry of Defense documents, as well as testimonies from the soldiers themselves, their relatives, and publicly available data.
Apr 2025
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.
Dec 2016
A portrait of Richard Semashkov, a rapper famous for anti-liberal songs and friendship with Prilepin and other "patriotic" artists.
Jan 2017
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.
Dec 2015
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.
Feb 2021
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.
Jul 2021
On the evening of August 9, they celebrated and thought that this was happening all over the country, but then it turned out that Alyaksandr Lukashenka was declared the winner of the Belarusian elections. Now the inhabitants of Borovlyan are pondering what to do, and jokingly propose to create the Borovlyany People's Republic.
Aug 2020
The Yakut shaman Alexander Gabyshev believes that Vladimir Putin is "a product of dark forces," so he went on foot to Moscow to "expel" him. The shaman began his journey alone, but soon his followers began to join him. In Chita, he gathered a large rally. Buryatia was the next region on the path of Gabyshev: mass protests began in Ulan-Ude because of the detention of his supporters. Gabyshev was going to go to Moscow for two years - so as not to rush to communicate along the way with the people. The shaman and his followers moved along the roads, overcame an average of 20 kilometers per day, stayed for the night in tents, sometimes in roadside hotels. Local residents and people passing by went to talk to him, take pictures, help with groceries and money.
Sep 2019
The Donetsk Airport, Ukraine. Rebuilt in 2012, but now a scene of utter devastation - shortly after Russian-backed separatists have taken it over. Weaving together the voices of fighters on both sides supported by battle video, we tell an unvarnished story of war through the eyes of those who were there. The desperate fight for an airport whose capture seems more symbolic than strategic, they also show how human nature can adapt - in sometimes disturbing ways - when one's life is on the line.
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.
Dec 2021
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...
May 2017
Striptease dancers - student, nurse, former loan officer, former athlete. The girls chose this profession to earn money. However, this is a complex world with complex rules, in a sense, dangerous production. The owner of a strip club is also a difficult profession. Lucky Lee, the head of the Moscow Golden Girls establishment, is a bright character, video blogger, fighter for world peace. To become the owner of a strip club, he gave up banking.
Feb 2020
How Lyusia Stein - a graduate of VGIK and a municipal deputy of Moscow - went to work for Ksenia Sobchak's campaign headquarters.
Dec 2018
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”.
Mother of a girl who committed suicide due to bullying at school; yesterday's teens who have experienced bullying; a girl who herself was involved in bullying. All the characters in this film have something in common: pain, complexes, self-doubt, indifference of adults. But the problem can be solved, and the heroes of the film talk about what to do in such situations.
Dec 2020
Jul 2016
"I'm going out" - were the last words of the young Minsk resident Roman Bondarenko in a telegram chat before he went out into the street to stop unidentified people in civilian clothes tearing down the white-red-white symbols of the protests against Alexander Lukashenko at the "Square of Changes" in the center of Minsk.