A film about Pavel Kushnir — a musician who refused to compromise, in art or in conscience. A “great little man,” as his friends describe him, Pavel played sublime music for two elderly women in an empty community hall with the same devotion he would have brought to Carnegie Hall. He wrote extraordinary novels and dared to protest, fully aware of the consequences. In 2024, Pavel Kushnir died in a prison in Birobidzhan.

Until recently, 21-year-old Timofey Anufriev — the son of renowned artist Sergey Anufriev — was an ordinary student in St. Petersburg. For more than a year now, he has been fighting for Ukraine as part of the RDK. The "The Insider" film crew met with him in Kyiv. In the film by "The Insider", Timofey speaks about why he made this choice, about war, and about death.

His name is Fyodor. This name is well known to many LGBTQ refugees. He helped, supported, and guided people. Many trusted him.

And then everything collapsed. Dozens of victims, accusations of fraud and lies, episodes from the past under the surnames Ugolkov and Fain.

This film is the story of my friend Valya, who, at a difficult moment in her life, trusted Fyodor and lost time, money, and a part of herself.

*From the documentary series «Refuge with a Twist»

Relatives of soldiers killed in Russia’s war against Ukraine are entitled to compensation — insurance payments, regional grants, and so-called “presidential” benefits. Altogether, the sum amounts to around 14 million rubles, divided among the closest family members. This film tells the stories of three women — Oksana Nazarenko from Karachay-Cherkessia, Natalia Makarova from St. Petersburg, and Anastasia Yudina from the Leningrad region. They are taking the fathers of their sons to court over the payouts, arguing that these men did not raise the children and were absent from their lives after divorce. For us, this is not a film about money, but about the psychology of many Russian families — where the figure of an absent father was replaced by cadet “brotherhood,” and poverty was compensated by the dream of a military career for a child.

The documentary film explores a top-secret Russian government experiment involving the recruitment and deployment of prisoners to the war in Ukraine. This investigation vividly exposes the brutal cruelty of the Russian military machine and the Kremlin’s disregard for legality and human rights. The film reveals previously unknown details of one of the most ruthless and cynical military projects of the 21st century, based on the analysis of several hundred Ministry of Defense documents, as well as testimonies from the soldiers themselves, their relatives, and publicly available data.

In March 2022, after Russian forces occupied the Ukrainian city of Bucha, dozens of civilians were killed on Yablunska Street over the course of three days. Russian authorities later claimed that the footage of the massacre had been staged. However, testimony from survivors indicates that many civilians were not killed accidentally — they were deliberately targeted. Using CCTV recordings, drone footage, and military documents, the Ukrainian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reconstructed a detailed account of the bloodiest days on Yablunska Street and identified some of the officers involved in these crimes.

Since February 2022, hundreds of thousands of Russians have passed through the front lines. They return home changed—shaped by experiences beyond imagination. They’ve seen shells tear their friends apart, dogs eat corpses. They’ve slept on dead bodies. And they’ve pulled the trigger themselves. How has this changed them? What do they think about the war? Can they find their place in peaceful life? We came to these men with questions that trouble us as well. Eighteen men speak about the terrifying events they took part in. About the choices they made. And how they now judge those choices. Their shared story as men is one of the greatest tragedies to have befallen our country in recent decades.

In the seventh episode of Silent Rock ’n’ Roll, Mikhail Kozyrev traces the reverse evolution of Russian chanson — from the songs of Galich, Okudzhava, and Vysotsky to contemporary performers such as Grigory Leps, Stas Mikhailov, and Vika Tsyganova. He examines the widespread support for the war among chanson artists and explores the reasons behind the enduring popularity of the criminal-themed genre in Russia.

After the war began, memorial plaques bearing the names of victims of repression started being torn down far more often than before. The Last Address project didn’t have the resources to keep up with the vandalism. A group of activists stepped in: they began making temporary cardboard plaques and set out to track down those responsible.

A film about systemic violence and the silence it leaves behind. It reflects on the legacy of state intrusion into private lives and the cost of impunity — not only for the victims, but also for the perpetrators, who remain free yet internally hollow. This is a story of fear, memory, and resistance — a testimony of those whose voices were never meant to be heard.

Due to his disagreement with the war, Evgeny Savin (Krаsava) relocates his private football club from Russia to Cyprus. Now, the first-ever emigrant club in history must either fight for a spot in European competitions or face closure.

Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who forged the German Empire “with iron and blood,” once said that wars are won not by generals, but by teachers and priests. Following a similar logic, Russian President Vladimir Putin established Yunarmiya in 2016 — a nationwide system of military training for children aged eight to seventeen. This film offers an inside look at the lives and upbringing of the Yunarmiya cadets in the city of Vologda.

Mothers and fathers of gay, lesbian, and trans children from Georgia, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine travel to Berlin to walk together in the Pride parade. Living under one roof, they prepare for the march — painting signs, cooking borscht, and reflecting on how their relationships with their queer children have evolved over the years.

“Just One: The True Story of Patient Zero” tells the story of the person commonly referred to as “patient zero” — the first Soviet citizen diagnosed with HIV. The official history of the epidemic in the USSR begins with this 1987 case, a crisis that has since affected millions in Russia: those living with the virus and those who have died from AIDS. Yet almost nothing is known about this individual. The few existing facts have long dissolved into myths, propaganda, and misinformation. No photographs, no footage — nothing. The biography of “patient zero” had to be reconstructed from scratch, turning the film into a historical investigation.

Although the British Empire collapsed in the mid-20th century, many still believe that British imperialism is alive and well. Around fifteen countries — including Canada and Australia — continue to recognize the British monarch as their nominal head of state. In recent years, as relations between Russia and the West have sharply deteriorated, Britain has been portrayed as Russia’s principal arch-enemy, with imperialist thinking often cited as the root cause. In our new in-depth episode, we explore the history of the British Empire and ask whether it truly belongs to the past. We travel to London, to India — once the “jewel in the crown” — and to other countries that still have unresolved questions for the Empire and are demanding the repayment of historical debts.

“Hunting the Rainbow” is a documentary about how, in today’s Russia, love and private life have become grounds for harassment, persecution, and criminal prosecution. The film begins with ordinary situations that, in a different political context, would have remained part of everyday life: two lovers walking home hand in hand, flirting in a private chat, sharing a kiss on the street. In contemporary Russia, however, these simple acts trigger a chain of violence — because the lovers are of the same sex. And that has now become a crime. Flyers with photographs, curses, and threats appear in apartment buildings. A kiss in public leads to detention and beatings. Private messages in a closed group result in abduction straight from a university classroom and hours of police torture. Through the stories of Lyosha, two men named Sergey, and August, the film systematically reveals how this system operates — from everyday homophobia and workplace pressure to the actions of law enforcement agencies. The film’s central and most brutal storyline follows August, a Siberian man of Chechen origin: a closed chat, a denunciation, kidnapping, torture, threats, and attempts to force him to hand over the names of other “gays.” A key political backdrop to the film is the Russian Supreme Court ruling of November 30, 2023, which designated the so-called “international LGBT movement” as extremist. The film traces how methods of persecution once characteristic of the North Caucasus are gradually spreading to other regions of the country. “Hunting the Rainbow” captures the moment when relative visibility and limited freedom are replaced by a new norm — the need to constantly hide, even within one’s own home.

Traveling to a totalitarian, authoritarian — or simply unfree — country is easy today. The real question is what such a journey allows one to see, and more importantly, to truly notice. Most travelers return with conventional impressions: restaurants, cafés, exhibitions, theaters. Yet distance often sharpens perception. With this in mind, the filmmakers travel to Nazi Berlin of 1936, seeking to understand what impressions and observations they might have brought back from this dazzling, remarkable, and deeply unsettling city.

The film is a collage of videos shot in Russia and posted online after the start of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. The people captured in these clips could easily have stepped out of the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.

An archival montage film composed entirely of news broadcasts, TV programs, and commercials from 1991–1999 - the decade when Russian television was truly free. It’s hard to believe now that it ever existed.

Over the years of the war, thousands of Russian prisoners have been released. Until autumn 2024, they could sign six-month military contracts and receive a presidential pardon. Some of them had been convicted of serious crimes and thus avoided decades in prison. Among those released was the murderer of Kemerovo student Vera Pekhteleva — her parents learned about his freedom only six months later. We filmed the stories of victims whose mothers lost track of the convicted killers and still do not know where they are. We also spoke with two former offenders who returned from the front and are now trying to live as ordinary citizens.

"The Evidence" deals with the phenomenon of government fuelled hate speech and shows the changes in a controversial Belarusian propagandist that occur during four years after the mass protests in Belarus in 2020.