Tango with Putin: Fighting for Free Media in Russia

The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies are pleased to co-sponsor a screening of Vera Krichevskaya's film, "Tango with Putin: Fighting for Free Media in Russia," a documentary that traces the growth and eventual shuttering of Dozhd TV (TV Rain), the last independent TV station in Russia.

In 2008, 35-year-old Natasha was a newly rich, successful woman looking for fame, reputation, and for dreams to come true. She decided to launch an independent TV station in Putin’s Russia. Unlike the state-sponsored outlets, Natasha hired opposition reporters and minorities, activists and LGBTQ community members. Soon, her project became the lone island of political and sexual freedom. For 12 years, Dozhd TV (also known as TV Rain) remained the only independent news TV station in Russia. 

What Natasha couldn't have known was that she and her station would end up on the frontlines of the war between truth and propaganda, face financial ruin, and eventually lose the motherland she had worked so hard to reform. On March 3, 2022 TV Rain was shut down by the Russian state on the sixth day of the war in Ukraine. But it is not the end of the story.