Part media documentary, part Putin takedown, this “fascinating” film charts the rise of Dozhd, an independent TV station in Russia that’s long been hounded by the Kremlin, said Kevin Maher in The Times.
Originally launched in 2010 as a lifestyle channel by Natalia Sindeeva, a “glamorous Russian socialite”, Dozhd quickly changed direction and became an unexpected source of reliable news and “oppositional politics”, with the now-jailed anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny among its frequent guests.
Soon its reporters were being “tossed into secret police vans”, but somehow the channel has survived. Director Vera Krichevskaya, a former Dozhd producer, focuses on Sindeeva, tracking her “riches to righteousness awakening” without diving deeply enough into her motivations for the film to entirely satisfy. All the same, it delivers an impression of Vladimir Putin’s increasingly totalitarian regime that is “grimly compelling” and depressingly relevant.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Had we got a better sense of Sindeeva’s “Damascene conversion”, this “valuable portrait” could have been “a great one”, agreed Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. Still, the film is very interesting, not least on the hopeful moment when Dmitry Medvedev became president in 2008.
From its earliest days, the channel gave voice to Ukrainians from inside Russia, said Danny Leigh in the FT. As a tribute to dogged independent journalism, this film would be “welcome anytime” – but right now it feels positively urgent.
-
Buddhist monks’ US walk for peaceUnder the Radar Crowds have turned out on the roads from California to Washington and ‘millions are finding hope in their journey’
-
American universities are losing ground to their foreign counterpartsThe Explainer While Harvard is still near the top, other colleges have slipped
-
How to navigate dating apps to find ‘the one’The Week Recommends Put an end to endless swiping and make real romantic connections
-
Catherine O'Hara: The madcap actress who sparkled on ‘SCTV’ and ‘Schitt’s Creek’Feature O'Hara cracked up audiences for more than 50 years
-
6 gorgeous homes in warm climesFeature Featuring a Spanish Revival in Tucson and Richard Neutra-designed modernist home in Los Angeles
-
Touring the vineyards of southern BoliviaThe Week Recommends Strongly reminiscent of Andalusia, these vineyards cut deep into the country’s southwest
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibitionThe Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classicThe Week Recommends Rupert Goold’s musical has ‘demonic razzle dazzle’ in spades
-
Properties of the week: houses near spectacular coastal walksThe Week Recommends Featuring homes in Cornwall, Devon and Northumberland
-
Melania: an ‘ice-cold’ documentaryTalking Point The film has played to largely empty cinemas, but it does have one fan
-
Nouvelle Vague: ‘a film of great passion’The Week Recommends Richard Linklater’s homage to the French New Wave
