The recent release of the spikily titled F@ck This Job is remarkably prescient. Director Vera Krichevskaya’s highly watchable documentary charts the journey of the seemingly un-killable independent Russian television station Dozhd TV since its launch in 2008 and transfer to YouTube in in 2021 where it found an engaged audience.
On March 3 2022 it was finally silenced (for the time being anyway) due to a new law, passed unanimously in the Russian parliament, which banned news operations from reporting anything other than state-approved press releases.
After the film wrapped it gained a new subheading, ‘Tango With Putin’ (the original one was ‘Adventures in Russian Journalism’), which draws on Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s heavy control of all aspects of the country, and also links to the station’s irrepressible founder Natalya Sindeyeva’s passion for dance. In truth, both are appropriate, given how at its heart this film is about the ever-changing challenges of delivering independent news in Russia.
The film arrived in UK cinemas in late February and on the BBC shortly afterwards, and was due to open in Russian cinemas on March 3. Just as Dozhd TV (aka TV Rain) was forced off the air (at a point when it had 80,000 paying subscribers) the film aired in Russia via YouTube.
Vera Krichevskaya charts – in linear fashion – the rise of Dozhd TV and her own involvement working there. The brainchild of party-loving radio executive and Russian social celebrity Natalya Sindeyeva, the channel started with grand ambitions, with early scenes showing Sindeyeva and the then-television producer Krichevskaya looking at expensive property to host the organisation. When Sindeyeva’s banker (and backer) husband Alexander ‘Sasha’ Vinokurov’s bank was hit by the 2008 recession they sought out cheaper premises, and admit that when they went live in 2010 it all looked very much “DIY”.
In 2011 when a suicide bomber at Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport killed 37 people the station featured extensive coverage, but as Krichevskaya reflects, we “suddenly found ourselves in a different reality to the news pictures by the other TV stations” as state-controlled media repressed the news. Dozhd TV audiences started to grow but – as the film charts – they found themselves under cyber-attack as the media landscape under Putin became increasingly challenging.
In striking footage from Kyiv in 2014 they covered fighting in the city streets. A local man says of the Russians, “we love them…we just don’t love Putin, that is all”. The film’s title comes from a comment by a Dozhd reporter caught up in the chaos of covering Kyiv’s 2014 Maidan revolution.
The channel soon finds itself dropped by the NTV+ cable package and the State Parliament criticises them. They lose 80% of their audience as well as advertisers as more carriers drop them, and staff agree to a 30% pay cut to try and keep the channel on air in some form.
They are forced to move from office to office and start to operate from behind a paywall. Always seeking ways to reach audiences the channel eventually emerges as a successful YouTube channel. The film’s latter half flits between Sindeyeva’s treatment for breast cancer in Germany and her fractured marriage, as well as detailing staff fears of their being watched and followed.
By 2020 Dozhd TV had intensified its news coverage for free on YouTube and broadcasts reached tens of millions of viewers allowing Dozhd to pay off its debts, but in May 2021 it was banned from the Kremlin press corps “for covering the protests in support of Alexei Navalny” and in the same year the Russian Ministry of Justice labelled Dozhd a “foreign agent”.
The film may end with a note that Natalya and Sasha have separated, but the story has progressed way beyond that already gloomy ending, and there will likely be call-outs for additional footage to bring the story up to date.
The film offers a fascinating insight into Russian independent journalism, and is very much driven by the charismatic Sindeyeva – there may well be plenty of footage of her partying with colleagues and relishing her celebrity status, but as we see in the film, her determination is essentially what kept the channel on air.
As director Vera Krichevskaya says in her press notes: “I wanted to make a fairy tale documentary. A film about a real fighter for justice, an activist born from a glamorous socialite scene and a group of very young journalists who become essential to the freedom of the press. My hope was for a free Russia before our hopes for freedom in Russia collapsed. But after all, it’s not a fairy tale. It’s a very honest, sad and sometimes funny documentary story with an unknown end.” The fairy tale may seem to have come to an end…but watch out for a sequel to Dozhd TV.
UK, 2021, 103mins
Dir Vera Krichevskaya
Production 6 Days, Roast Beef Productions, Oak Foundation, NDR, Doc Society, Storyville
Producers Vera Krichevskaya, Mike Lerner
Screenplay Vera Krichevskaya, Paulina Ukrainets
Cinematography Aleksandr Shelaputov, Danny Salkhov
Editors Adam Finch, Vera Krichevskaya
Music Simon Russell
