Next week, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov receive their Nobel peace prizes. In a rare interview, Muratov says he fears the world is sliding towards fascism
To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.
It was 6:40 on the morning of August 20, 2020 when Yulia Navalnayaâs phone rang. She wasnât normally up that early, but she was preparing to go to the airport to meet her husband, Alexey Navalny, the sole remaining leader of the Russian opposition, whose flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk was scheduled to arrive in Moscow at eight that morning. Navalnaya looked at her phone. It was Kira Yarmysh, her husbandâs press secretary, who was supposed to be midflight with Alexey. âYulia, donât worry,â Yarmysh said. âAlexey has been poisoned, the plane landed in Omsk.â Navalnaya said âokayâ and hung up. If the plane carrying her husband had to make an emergency landing 1,700 miles from its intended destination, Alexeyâs life must have been in imminent danger. This was it, then. She had been preparing for this moment for a decade, and now it was finally here, pouring in
Filmmaker Vitaly Mansky on Artdocfest and Russia on Film
For more than 30 years Mansky has championed documentary filmmaking. Mansky with Mikhail Gorbachev Masnki-doc.com
Film director Vitaly Mansky is usually behind the camera, but in recent weeks he found himself on the other side of the lens. The founder and president of Artdocfest, the largest independent documentary film festival in Russia, was in the news throughout the festival in Moscow and St. Petersburg as he was closed down by the authorities and attacked by pro-Kremlin activists. news
The award-winning filmmaker, who has directed more than 30 films, has made it his mission to keep documentary filmmaking alive and before the public. He began Artdocfest in 2007 in Moscow, but after its uncensored selection of films on the widest variety of topics drew increasing criticism, disruption, and attacks, he moved his family and the festival to Riga. But the festival, online and
By Vera Krichevskaya
On the morning of August 27 I opened my Twitter account as usual, and the first thing that caught my eye was a tweet with a bright red avatar:
“Jerusalem Post: Moscow mayor hopeful raises Jewish fears with anti-Semitic remarks”.
Stunned, I clicked on the link. There, on the website of one of Israel’s oldest and best-known newspapers, I found the article under the same headline. It was illustrated with a large photograph of Alexei Navalny a democracy activist, anti-corruption crusader and the leader of the Russian opposition, who is now running for mayor of Moscow. The sub-headline, in bold, states that “At a