I n the fall of 2021, the director Julia Loktev traveled from her Brooklyn home to Moscow, with the intent to film some friends under pressure. That summer, the Russian government had cracked down on the remaining independent media in the country, designating outlets and journalists it found irksome as “foreign agents”. Loktev, who moved to the US from the Soviet Union at age nine, had several journalist friends now required to submit detailed financial reports to the government and affix an all-caps disclaimer to any output, be it an article or an Instagram post of their cat, declaring it the work of a foreign agent. ‘Death always feels imminent’: a moving Netflix documentary on prison, music and forgiveness Read more
Loktev began shadowing her friend Anna Nemzer, a host on the co