Mariya Alyokhina

Riot Days is an inventive and shocking performance based on the memoirs of Maria Alyokhina from Pussy Riot. With this performance, one of the main art groups in the world traveled to more than 200 countries in Europe, the USA, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand. The performance received many prestigious awards, and also gathered an enthusiastic press.

Russian activists Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Ekaterina Samutsevich decide to separate from the well-known activist group Voina and create their own group named Pussy Riot that would express their ideas of female independence, combining activism, feminism, and punk rock music. Their defeat in court becomes their moral victory, as Pussy Riot are cheered on by thousands of their new-found fans.

Pussy Riot: The Movement embarks on the odyssey of the girls who rocked a country and continue to fight for human rights throughout the world. Documentary follows Masha Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich through their harsh two year sentences for playing music to their freedom. What started as a punk rock collective has catapulted to a world movement for human rights.

"Puss Riot and other sins" - The Putin system is taking on more and more features of the Soviet system. The big fear and paranoia returns.

“I want to show things how they are.” Meet Maria (Masha) Alyokhina of the Russian activist movement Pussy Riot, who has been protesting against the regime of Vladimir Putin through public, colourful and non-violent actions for over a decade. “The system pretends to have a serious face. That’s how they want the fear to go inside you and paralyse you. And we believe that the smile and humour break this fear.” Maria Alyokhina describes today’s Russia as a totalitarian regime and the development since 2012 as “the road to hell”, reaching a low point with the attack against Ukraine in 2022.

In 2012 two members of anarchistic female band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in a Mordovian labor camp for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred". Russian film collective Gogol’s Wives follow each step of the feminist punk band’s battle against Putin including their first disruptive performances on a trolley bus, shooting a video about transparent elections, a controversial performance in a Red Square cathedral, and footage shot in a jail cell. Support comes from many corners including Madonna who painted the words "Pussy Riot" on her back and wore a balaclava during her Moscow show. The documentary portrays the grim state of present-day Russia, a country starkly divided between conservatism and anarchy. Pussy Riot believes that art has to be free and they're willing to take it to extremes. "Pussycat made a mess in the house," they say, and the house is Russia. The filmmakers do not seek to moralize, they simply edit events and leave viewers to draw their own conclusions.

This chronicle of Russian musical group Pussy Riot explores how they morphed from an obscure feminist protest band to an international cause celebre.