In On Putin's Blacklist, we get to know the notorious Russian president through people that he's hurt.
And it’s a lengthy list, because Vladimir Putin – the ex-KGB agent who has shifted between the roles of Prime Minister and President of Russia a couple of times since 1999 – has chipped away at the rights of numerous segments of Russian society, including activists, orphans, the press, and the LGBTQ community.
“Putin controls every single ounce of Russian government with what he does,” says Boris Ivanov, the Vancouver filmmaker behind the feature-length documentary On Putin’s Blacklist, which screens October 10 as part of the 2017 Vancouver International Film Festival. “And with the help of propaganda in Russia, he’s been able to build this hatred of Russians towards the West.”
Through first-hand accounts and archival news footage, On Putin’s Blacklist examines the consequences of Putin’s ban on adoptions to the United States and countries that allow same-sex unions, as well as state-funded propaganda (specifically RT, the Kremlin’s television network), the country’s ban on foreign NGOs, the ongoing vilification of the LGBTQ community, the militarization of the church, and criminalization around merely talking about social inequality.
Before On Putin’s Blacklist, Ivanov had produced a number of films about Russian adoptions. “It sickened me how these children became pawns in a geo-political war,” says Ivanov – which is why, with On Putin’s Blacklist, “I wanted to bring attention to how inappropriate that is, and also explain what is happening in Russia to a North American audience.”
In order to build his cinematic portrait of the contentious Russian leader, Ivanov interviewed adoptive children and parents, and members of the Russian LGBTQ community who have been forced to flee the country. Among the interview subjects: the politician who cast the single vote against Russia’s annexation of Crimea and was subsequently barred from re-entering country while visiting abroad (and brought up on phony embezzlement charges); members of famed activist group Pussy Riot; devastated parents whose international adoptions were canceled when Putin suddenly instituted the adoption ban; survivors of police brutality and imprisonment; and Masha Gessen, who wrote the book The Man Without A Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, also in exile.
One group of victims you won’t find on this particular blacklist is the American electorate. Ivanov filmed the bulk of his film a couple of years ago, so there’s little mention of the 2016 American election in his film, save for at the very beginning and the very end, when a Russian politician toasts to Donald Trump’s victory on state television.
Still, one can’t help but reflect on Trump and Russia’s alleged attempts to tamper with America’s democratic process as Ivanov examines Putin’s penchant for manipulating public sentiment through propaganda.
“I believe people in North America are not quite familiar with what propaganda actually is,” says Ivanov. “Putin uses propaganda to confuse his own population so they don’t know what to think, and it makes it very easy to control the populace, and also makes it difficult to know what the truth is. It seems like, in North America nowadays, the same thing is happening: there’s so much ‘fake news,’ and you don’t know what to believe, so you give up. Russia perfected that system many years ago. North America is catching up now.”
• On Putin’s Blacklist screens tonight (Oct. 10) at Cineplex Odeon International Village Cinema as part of the 2017 Vancouver International Film Festival. Tickets at viff.org.
