Meet the women at the center. Ksyusha keeps filing stories while her fiancé sits in prison. Anna hosts everyday acts of defiance on air while shielding her daughter from the threats that follow her home. Sonya records her podcast in a stripped-bare apartment, no decorations, nothing to distract from the work or the fear. Alesya hides her relationship from her traditional mother and wonders if her office is wired. These aren’t abstract symbols of resistance. They’re sharp, warm, funny, exhausted human beings trying to keep truth alive while surveillance tightens and the state labels them enemies.
Four months after Loktev starts filming, Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The film catches the exact pivot—the moment independent media gets strangled, outlets shuttered, and exile becomes the only exit ramp left. You watch them scramble, report against the propaganda flood, then pack what they can and leave. The world you’re seeing, Loktev warns early on, no longer exists. That line hits harder now.
The production itself feels impossible. Loktev shot it herself, mostly on an iPhone, moving light and invisible. Co-editor Michael Taylor (who cut The Farewell) helped shape the material, and consulting producer Riva Marker kept the focus tight. The result earned serious steel: Critics’ Choice at IDFA, shortlisted for an Oscar, winner at Gotham and New York Film Critics Circle. Critics call it staggering, heartbreaking, a historic record dressed as immersive reality. Five-and-a-half hours that feel like a Russian novel crossed with the most urgent documentary you’ll see this year.
This isn’t distant history. It’s a mirror held up to any place where power decides truth is negotiable. You watch these women navigate paranoia, loyalty, love, and the grinding daily choice to keep speaking when silence would be safer. Their laughter still cuts through the dread. Their ordinary moments—coffee, conversation, small rebellions—make the stakes feel personal, not performative.
If you’re in Atlanta or anywhere the platform reaches, clear some evenings starting April 3. Stream it. Sit with it. Let the weight settle. Because these stories don’t stay contained. They ripple. They ask you what you’d do when the air gets thin and the labels start sticking to your own door.
The trailer is already out there, pulling you in. The poster artwork lands with that same stark urgency. Two headshots above capture the faces behind the lens and the voices on screen—Julia Loktev’s steady gaze, the quiet command of someone who lived every frame, and Anna Nemzer’s presence, the co-director who knew the terrain from the inside. Look at them. Then watch the film. The courage is contagious. The questions it leaves you with won’t let go easy.
Emotional truth is mandatory here. Biographical truth is non-negotiable. The craft survives without costume because the women in front of the camera never had the luxury of one.

AwardWinningdocumentaryMUBITrailerUndesirab..Unveils