F@ck This Job

Vera Krichevskaya’s documentary reveals how Dozhd TV set out to defy Putin by freely covering the news.

The title chosen for this film hardly feels apt for a documentary studying the struggles of an independent TV channel as it seeks to survive in Putin's Russia. But that's only one of the oddities about the approach adopted for what is a tale of individuals coming increasingly under pressure over a decade in which freedoms have been assailed. It may seem just a small point, but the light tone of Simon Russell's music score is bizarrely at odds with the film’s dramatic arc. The central figure here is the socialite Natalya Sindeyeva (spellings of her name vary). It was she who founded the Dozhd TV station when in 2008 she decided to use her wealth to set up this dream project. It was conceived as a so-called Optimistic Channel but would in time change its initial ephemeral character to become a cause to be championed. That was when it sought to relay to the Russian public the truth about events ignored by the state-owned television media.

The film covers the period from the station’s opening to its position in 2020 when the authorities chose to brand it a foreign agent and that represents a darkening arc and one that surely calls out for a documentary that records the history of Dozhd in detail and with that context in mind. But F@ck This Job was made by the TV documentarian Vera Krichevskaya who was a co-founder of Dozhd and, although we see interview footage with Sindeyeva and others that is seemingly recent, most of the footage from the past decade appears to have been shot at the time. However representative of the moment, such scenes lack that sense of detail and of the history that was evolving, the very ingredients that would have made this a gripping film.

As it is, we seem to get less than the full picture and questions are prompted but remain unanswered. Although late on the film gives some emphasis to Sindeyeva getting treatment for cancer, it is not enough of a biopic to reveal that the rich banker whom she married and who supported her work, Alexander Vinokurov, was in fact her third husband. The film is frank enough to reveal that the channel was appallingly inept when it started up, but one wonders why that was so since by then Sindeyeva had had years of experience in both radio and television (a fact hardly touched on here). Things improved, of course, and we hear from many of Dozhd’s loyal staff, one of whom makes the decision to come out as gay undeterred by the law against gay propaganda set up in 2013. It is said that half or more of the team were affected by this legislation, but no further background is given. Similarly, there is a lack of clarity over various clashes that arose. One can, perhaps, understand why relatively early on those keen to see the channel being critical of the regime would disapprove of the former President, Dmitry Medvedev, being welcomed as a visitor to Dozhd. However, the film is unnecessarily vague over such later matters as Vera Krichevskaya herself withdrawing at one point and then coming back and similarly the revelation that the staff which had felt like a family became subject to acute tensions needs to be more fully discussed.

The film’s title is a phrase that is heard in passing during footage about reporting on street violence in Ukraine. But, even as oppression and repression build up and Putin holds his 2020 referendum to stay in power until 2036, the movie records Sindeyeva’s love of the tango and looks back on her initial rooftop publicity for Dozhd which had echoed Gene Kelly’s most famous screen moment (Dozhd means rain). There are even times early on when this film feels like a promotional video for Dozhd and I felt throughout that the station’s history would have been far more tellingly presented in a mode akin to exploratory journalism undertaken from today's viewpoint. Despite that, the film does have value because the subject is inherently interesting and because it gives us a view of 21st-century Russia as seen by those born in 1970 or later. Even so, it is characteristic that, although Alexander Vinokurov is a contributor and one last seen supporting his wife, the written statements in the closing moments of the film include one which tells us that they have separated.

Alternative title: Tango with Putin.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Featuring Natalya Sindeyeva, Mikhail Zygar, Alexander Vinokurov, Anna Mongayt.

Dir Vera Krichevskaya, Pro Mike Lerner and Vera Krichevskaya, Screenplay Vera Krichevskaya and Paulina Ukrainets, Ph Aleksandr Selaputov and Danny Salkhov, Ed Adam Finch, Music Simon Russell.

Six Days Films/Roast Beef Productions/Doc Society/Norddeutcher Rundfunk (NDR)-Journeyman Pictures.
104 mins. UK/Germany. 2021. UK Rel: 24 February 2022. No Cert.