Tonight’s Dateline on SBS ONE will screen the revealing film, which has unprecedented access to those leading the fight against President Putin, showing the political oppression, intimidation and violence that they face.
It focuses on anti-corruption blogger turned rising political star Alexei Navalny, who led tens of thousands of people in protest at Putin’s re-election in Moscow in 2012.
“We just want some freedom, some equality, some basic human dignity,” he told the crowd at one of the rallies that followed.
Filmmakers Pavel Kostomarov, Alexandr Rastorguev and Aleksei Pivovarov followed him closely as he led the largest street protests in Russia in 20 years.
And they continued to film as the police moved in to brutally arrest him and then searched his apartment.
“The 13 hour search is now over… they’ve assigned 160 investigating officers to the case,” he says afterwards. “It is as if I committed the worst crime in the history of Moscow.”
The documentary began as a series of daily videos uploaded online and became an alternative news source for many Russians.
But authorities clamped down and confiscated the footage to use as evidence against the protesters… the film is made from a back-up copy that had been made.
It also shows Navalny at court later facing embezzlement charges, which he says were brought to push him out of politics.
“How can it be that a country of 140 million people, the largest and one of the wealthiest in the world, has let itself be ruled by a bunch of idiots?” he asked in court.
Eventually released from prison, he stepped up his campaign against Putin and won 27% of votes in Moscow’s mayoral elections last September, but is now under house arrest and banned from using the phone or internet.
See this special report, Fighting Putin, on tonight’s Dateline at 9.30pm on SBS ONE.
