Julia Loktev

If you saw the Navalny film, for example, much of the footage you're seeing is TV Rain.

It's the kind of thing where everybody tuned in.

Alexei Navalny, yes.

Yeah, Alexei Navalny.

It was this kind of center of the opposition.

And my friend Anna had just started this incredible show called Who's Got the Power, where under an authoritarian government, she was focusing on people who were trying to make lives better for someone, whether it be people with disabilities, people

The homeless population focusing on press freedoms, but various activists and civil rights leaders who were trying to create a different kind of politics under this government.

And we thought it was quite disturbing, you know, when a society forces members of the society to mark themselves everywhere as...

Suspect, not really belonging to this society as foreign agents.

But it had just really started, and we said, okay, let's try to make a film about this.

Let's see where this goes.

Yeah, I had initially had this idea that I would have a cinematographer because, I don't know, I thought, you know, I would shoot it in a normal way, like the way you're supposed to shoot documentaries, you know, with...

a little bit of a crew.

But then as soon as I arrived, it was so clear that the best thing that I had was my access to people and also kind of how comfortable people seem to feel with me.

You know, I speak native Russian, but I also, I don't know, it's just one body in the room and people really opened up to me.

And also people are used to being filmed

With a phone, like the presence of phones is not a big deal.

I did have a little, eventually got a little lens on my phone and a little microphone, but it was just really me with a phone.

And I think that so affects how people behave because they just, there's an intimacy to the film.

And that's what you see is it's not like a normal documentary with interviews and, you know.