Mike Lerner and Maksim Pozdorovkin’s feature documentary Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, which first opened at Sundance this year and has screened to packed houses at Hot Docs and most recently VIFF, serves as both a primer for audiences uninitiated in the legal strife of the Russian feminist collective, as well as a detailed record with rare footage and insight for those of use who have been following the case all along.

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If you are in the former category, the story can be found in headlines all over the world: Pussy Riot, an all-female Moscow punk collective stormed the alter of a Russian Orthodox Church in February 2012 for a guerilla performance of the song “Punk Prayer: Mother of God Drive Putin Away.” Subsequently, three members – Nadya, Masha and Katya – were arrested and charged with hooliganism. The act was meant to protest the growing interconnection of Church and State in Russia (a country that lived for 70 years under a regime that forbid religious expression) thanks in large part to President Vladimir “No-Homo” Putin.

The film is comprised of found footage (including court video, arrest interviews, rehearsal footage and the incident itself), along with interviews of family members. While it’s obviously a major hindrance to not be able to interview the women directly, the film benefits from having extremely eloquent subjects in the three accused women, who use their opportunities to speak in court to brilliantly articulate their dissent. The women militantly oppose all forms of state-sanctioned oppression and human rights injustices, and understand very well the opportunity they are afforded by the controversy that has put them on the world’s stage, in true punk fashion.

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It’s problematic for the film that it has to rely so heavily on jarring video footage, and I imagine that when this airs on HBO (who picked up the North American TV rights) it will be easier to digest on a smaller screen. It would have benefited greatly from the opportunity to gain more personal insight into the lives of the imprisoned activists, particularly given that two of the three had small children at home, yet for the most part wore brave, if not smirkingly defiant faces in court. Moments of privileged access to how the women actually felt going through it all are the film’s best moments, as in the moment when Nadya and Masha laugh at photographers but, very self-aware, worry how their smiles may be misinterpreted on the outside.

It’s also interesting to watch the film from the comfort of a Western film festival; while the audience sneers and laughs at the oppression that the women must face, it seems to collectively ignore the fact that if such an incident occurred in America or Canada, it would hardly go unpunished. This is the part of the film that resonated most deeply with me afterwards: Pussy Riot is very much a 21st century punk movement, one that is concerned with global injustice and has been made popular by the digital tools of the modern age, despite their primitive performance techniques. Their voices – which this film does great justice in amplifying – deserve to be heard.