Matt Sarnecki

A young investigative journalist and his fiancée are brutally murdered in their home in Slovakia. Their deaths inspire the biggest protests in Slovakia since the fall of communism. The story takes an unexpected turn when a source leaks the secret murder case file to the murdered journalist’s colleagues. It includes the computers and encrypted communications of the assassination’s alleged mastermind, a businessman closely connected to the country’s ruling party. Trawling these encrypted messages, journalists discover that their country has been captured by corrupt oligarchs, judges, and law enforcement officials. A reckoning awaits.

​"Killing Pavel," a documentary produced by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and its Ukrainian partner, Slidstvo.Info​,​ reveals new details about the 2016 killing of journalist Pavel Sheremet. The Belarusian’s reporting had challenged authorities from Minsk to Moscow and Kyiv until he was killed in a car bomb in the Ukrainian capital in July 2016. The film features new information about his death that police never found, raising questions about the nature of the official investigation​.​