Tanya Mosley

Thea Chaloner directed today's show.

With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.

From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend.

I'm Tanya Mosley.

Today, filmmaker Julia Laktiv.

Her latest documentary follows independent Russian journalists in the months leading up to, and just after, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The film has arrived in the U.S.

at a moment when questions about press freedom feel newly present.

Also, historian Heather Ann Thompson revisits a 1984 New York City subway shooting when Bernard Goetz, a white man, shot four black teenagers.

In the days that followed, Goetz became a hometown hero.

This is Fresh Air Weekend.

I'm Tanya Mosley.

Four years ago, documentary filmmaker Julia Laktiv landed in Moscow to investigate the revival of an old Kremlin weapon, the label Foreign Agent, a phrase with deep roots in Soviet-era repression.

It was being applied not only to organizations, but to reporters, bloggers, and human rights groups that had spent decades documenting political persecution.

Armed with an iPhone, Lakhtov embedded herself among a group of young journalists working for TV Rain, Russia's last independent television channel, as well as other independent journalists who were deemed foreign agents.

The result is My Undesirable Friends, Part One, Last Air in Moscow, a five-and-a-half-hour documentary that has swept major critics' awards and stand as a record of what it looks like when dissent is slowly criminalized in real time.

Here's Julia Lochtev describing how she first entered that world.

By the end of that year, the Kremlin labeled more than 100 individuals and outlets as foreign agents.

Those designated were required to stamp government disclaimers on everything they published, even personal social media posts, with penalties that could include steep fines or imprisonment.

The film has arrived in the United States at a moment when questions about press freedom and the risks of reporting in politically charged spaces feel newly present here, too.