Julia Loktev

Every day it feels like there is something to bring the story home for Americans, where it almost feels like there's Easter eggs in the film that become more and more relevant every day.

The world you're about to see no longer exists.

None of us knew what was about to happen.

Four months before Russia started a full-scale war in Ukraine, I came to Moscow to make a film with my friend Anya.

Anya was a host at TV Rain, Russia's last remaining independent news channel.

In the fall of 2021, it was still allowed to operate online, which is unimaginable now.

I'm so excited to be here.

I mean, it's my reaction as I keep hearing news after news after news.

Every day it feels like there is something to bring the story home for Americans, where it almost feels like there's – I hate to put it this way, but it's strangely like there's Easter eggs in the film that become more and more relevant every day, whether it's arrests of journalists, obviously.

I mean, small, like, throwaways, like somebody talks about the end of comedy shows –

Or there's a moment where Russia's largest, oldest NGO, Memorial, which is a human rights organization that was dedicated to preserving the memory and researching cases of political repression, going back to Stalinist times, but also now.

And they're shut down by Russia.

the courts, and the judge uses the explanation of why should we, the victors in World War II, have to be ashamed of our history.

And so then I hear, you know, Trump talking about the Smithsonian and saying, why can't we talk about, you know, only the pleasant things in our history?

Why do we have to talk about things like slavery?

And this constant echo where one thing after another every day, it feels like something in the film starts to resonate in a different way here for the U.S.

Yeah, this is a film where the conception to execution was just a matter of a couple weeks.

And I think the only delay was me getting a tourist visa to Russia because I'm an American citizen and not a Russian citizen.

So as you mentioned, I was born in Russia.

I came to the U.S.