Tanya Mosley

Anya, for instance, tell us a little bit about her.

She's sort of the protagonist in this, the person that you're following throughout, and then you have these intersecting stories.

journalists that you're also checking in with?

Our guest today is filmmaker Julia Lochtev.

We'll be right back after a short break.

I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.

Julia, the women, the journalists that you follow, they are continuing to live.

They're into music.

They're into fashion and dinner parties and dark humor, even with this threat hanging over them.

What did you learn from them about how you keep fighting in the face of it?

Yeah, I was just going to say it feels very much cultural.

Well, there's that one scene where one of the journalists, she's doing these, when you're deemed a foreign agent, you have to fill out these financial reports, right?

And she's filling out financial reports of her expenses, her disclosures to the Russian government.

We're seeing her have to calculate things like

Her Netflix account and her cat food and all of those things.

And there's real consequences to her not getting it right, right?

And she's making fun of it along the way.

There's nothing to do but laugh to keep from crying.

I want to talk a little bit about joy as a subversion tactic.

And you mentioned earlier how