russia – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

THE ANTIQUE – Review by Lynn Venhaus

August 23, 2025August 24, 2025 Lynn Venhaus European Court of Human Rights, Georgia, Gorka Gomez Andreu, Putin, russia, Russudan Glurijdze, Salome Demuria, Sergey Dreyden, Tbilisi, The Antique, Valdimir Daushvili

A stark geopolitical message is woven throughout The Antique, a dark, dense drama that has parallels to current disconcerting U.S. government stances on immigrants. American audiences can’t not think of ICE raids here while watching the international feature showing Russian police round up Georgians and deport them in 2006. That eerie foreboding is inevitable while learning of the crisis that writer-director Rusudan Glurijdze focused on in her 2024 film.

Reviews

MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS: PART I – LAST AIR IN MOSCOW – Review by April Neale

August 5, 2025October 15, 2025 April Neale 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Anna Nemzer, independent journalism, Julia Loktev, My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, Olya Churakova, russia, Sonya Groysman, TV Rain

Julia Loktev’s urgent, epic documentary captures the last breath of Russia’s independent media before war and repression close in. em>My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow is a powerful, five-and-a-half-hour documentary chronicling the final months of Russia’s last independent news channel, TV Rain, before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Reviews

MY SWEET LAND – Review by April Neale

November 18, 2024November 21, 2024 April Neale armenia, Artsakh, Azerbaijan, documentary, multigenerational war, My Sweet Land, Nagorno-Karabakh, russia, Sareen Hairabedian

What a heartbreaker My Sweet Land is, a true coming-of-age story set against a multigenerational war in the post-Soviet Caucasus Mountains. This living history is told from the POV of an 11-year-old boy named Vrej, growing up in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). He goes to school and wants to be a dentist in his sweet village with its homing pigeons, fat pigs, and gaggles of geese and bees. My Sweet Land is also about the slow and steady destruction of Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, these ethnic Armenians who have inhabited a mountainous enclave between Armenia and Azerbaijan for millennia.

Reviews

CITIZEN X – Review by Martha K Baker

February 7, 2020February 7, 2020 Martha K. Baker (Archived Contributor) 0 Comments alex gibney, capitalism, citizen k, documentary, mikhail Khodorkovsky, russia

Citizen K documents the trials of a Russian dissident. The title, a nicked allusion to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, details the life of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian dissident now living in London. He was once a Russian oligarch, one of a band of millionaires. Ten years in a Siberian prison turned him against Vladimir Putin — but not against his homeland.

Reviews

Khodorkovsky (2011) – Documentary Retroview by Jennifer Merin

February 7, 2020 Jennifer Merin 0 Comments capitalism, cyril tuschi, documentary, mikhail Khodorkovsky, russia

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is an icon in Russia, and throughout the rest of the world, too. He’s young, attractive, smart and extremely rich. And he’s in jail. German filmmaker Cyril Tuschi profiles the fascinating Khodorkovsky, tracing his life and career from the time his early childhood, through his standout student career in Soviet Russia and his rise to prominence in post-Soviet Russia’s growing capitalist economy.