Three years into the war on Ukraine, it’s never been more important to understand the reality of life inside Putin’s Russia – but independent filmmaking within the country grows harder as crackdowns ramp up. Break through the propaganda with our new collection of recent documentaries that capture repression and resistance in action.

Nina Guseva’s immersive, gut-wrenching The Case (2021) follows the legal case of activist Konstantin Kotov, arrested following protests in 2019, capturing the byzantine workings of Russia’s judicial system and its crackdowns on opposition. Sybilla Tuxen’s Silent Sun of Russia (2023) is an intimate portrait of three young women attempting to reconcile their rebellious beliefs with the dark reality of Russia’s descent into authoritarianism and war that asks urgent questions about political agency and personal freedom. And away from the big cities, the forgotten citizens of Russia are facing their own challenges. Alexander Abaturov’s Paradise (2022) is a dreamlike but gripping account of the climate crisis as experienced in the Sakha Republic in northeastern Siberia, where devastating wildfires have ravaged the taiga and communities have been forced to take action in the face of official apathy.