Film Forum

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Julia Loktev was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and immigrated to the U.S. at age 9. She has made both fiction and documentary. THE LONELIEST PLANET starring Gael Garcia Bernal, screened at the New York Film Festival, received the Grand Jury Prize at the AFI Film Festival, nominations for Best Director at Independent Spirit Awards, and Best Feature at Gotham Awards, and was chosen by IndieWire as one of the “100 Best Films of Last Decade.” DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT premiered at Cannes in Directors' Fortnight, received two Gotham Awards nominations, and earned the Someone to Watch Award at Independent Spirit Awards. Her documentary MOMENT OF IMPACT won the Sundance Film Festival Documentary Directing Award and the Grand Prize at Cinéma du Reél, screened in New Directors/New Films at MoMA, and was an Independent Spirit Awards Truer Than Fiction nominee. Julia is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Emerging Icons Award from the George Eastman Museum.

Anna Nemzer (“Anya” in the film) is a documentary filmmaker and a senior host at TV Rain, hosting a political talk show, Politics: Direct Line, and a new show called Who’s Got the Power? focusing on activists trying to create a better society even as Russia becomes more and more oppressive. When Anya was 11, her mom and stepdad, both academics, emigrated, eventually settling in the U.S. Anya made a decision to stay in Russia, living with her grandparents. When we meet Anya, she still lives in the apartment she grew up in, sharing it with her own family now, including her 10-year old daughter Lilka, and a pet chinchilla. A regular cast of friends are always hanging out in the kitchen, a tight community of journalists and activists.

When we meet her, Ksenia Mironova (“Ksyusha” in the film) is a 23-year-old reporter at TV Rain and at the center of a group of young journalists. She works for several shows, including a feminist show called Women on Top. Her fiancé Ivan Safronov has been jailed on charges of “treason.” He’s been awaiting trial over a year, and the government still has provided no information about the charges. Other journalists constantly mention Ivan Safronov, worrying it could happen to them, which is exactly the point. He will eventually be sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Liesl Gerntholtz is the managing director of the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center at PEN America. She is a South African human rights lawyer who spent the early part of her career working for the South African Human Rights Commission and the Commission on Gender Equality in post-apartheid South Africa. She was the head of the HIV Litigation Unit of the AIDS Law Project and the Director of the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre. In those capacities, she led high impact, strategic litigation to advance the human rights of people living with HIV and women affected by violence. She has lived in the US since 2008, but remains committed to her South African roots, serving on the boards of several South African human rights organisations. Between 2008 and 2020, Liesl worked for Human Rights Watch in different capacities. She was the executive director of the Women’s Rights Division for nearly ten years, overseeing research and advocacy that responded to the most critical women’s rights issues in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and the US. She was also the Interim Deputy Executive Director for Programme, responsible for overall vision, strategy and leadership of 200 global staff working across sixteen divisions on a diverse set of human rights issues, and she also helmed the Africa Division for a year, leading the search for a new director. Most recently, she was the Chief Programme Officer for The Little Market where she led work to support opportunities for women from under-served communities to access dignified work. Liesl holds a BA (LLB) from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Alison Willmore is a film critic at Vulture and New York Magazine. In past lives, she has been a culture writer at BuzzFeed News and the TV editor at IndieWire, and with Matt Singer hosted the Filmspotting: SVU podcast. She lives in Brooklyn with her dog, Sammo, who also has strong opinions about cinema, but prefers to keep them to himself.

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