Ksenia Mironova

A group of Russian independent journalists flee the country and navigate life in exile after the invasion of Ukraine, focusing on their dispersed lives and ongoing struggle for truth across different nations. While Part I documented their lives in Moscow facing mounting pressure from the Putin regime, Part II chronicles their forced displacement and new realities in various countries, continuing their mission against authoritarianism.

American filmmaker Julia Loktev, born in the Soviet Union, returned to Moscow in 2021 to make a documentary on the persistence of independent media journalism in Putin’s Russia—just months, as it turned out, before the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Structured in five chapters, Loktev’s film is an extraordinary vérité document of a moment of immense change and anxiety.

The film tells about the former journalist of the Kommersant and Vedomosti newspapers, adviser to the Roscosmos state corporation Ivan Safronov. On July 7, 2020, Safronov was arrested, charged with high treason and placed in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center. So far, several months after Ivan's arrest, neither he, nor the defense, nor the public have been presented with a single piece of evidence of the journalist's guilt.