Julia Loktev charts the lives of several reporters for TV Rain an independent TV station in Russia that sought to report the truth. However Russian politics made it harder and harder as they were all listed as Foreign Agents, a fact that they constantly had to remind the audience.
It took me ages to finally see this film because it's almost 6 hour run time made it difficult to screen in one sitting. Actually the film would probably be best screened a series with breaks at each chapter.
While I enjoyed the film and the film has been winning numerous awards around the world and was short listed for the Oscars, I'm kind of at a loss as to why the film has gotten all of the accolades that it has. That's not a knock, more the realization that the film is covering the same ground as numerous other films about the state of journalism in Russia. I've seen this story before, though not quite as detailed as this 6ish hour presentation.
This is not to knock the film or imply that it is bad, only to state that if you've seen some of the other films on the subject, you know what you are going to find here. The film is very much worth seeing.
A sequel is due soon and it picks up the story of the journalists who fled Russia when their position became untenable in the wake of the Ukraine conflict.
No comments:
Post a Comment