Film Screening and Q&A: Politzek, the voices that challenge the Kremlin (2026)

Film screening and Q&A session with the film’s author and AUP lecturer, Sacha Koulaeva. Organized by Sharon Weill and The Justice lab.
In Russia, criticizing the war in Ukraine or Vladimir Putin’s regime has become a crime. Thousands of ordinary citizens are arrested, tried, and imprisoned. They are known as the “Politzek”: political prisoners. Filmed clandestinely over the course of nearly a year, the film gives a voice to those who refuse to remain silent. Through intertwined individual stories, the film exposes the repressive machinery of the Russian state.

Wednesday 25 of March
10:35-13:00
Room Q 604

A film co-directed by Ekaterina Mamontova and Manon Loizeau, and written by Sacha Koulaeva, screened on ARTE.

Sacha Koulaeva is a human rights expert, and a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris (PSIA) and the American University of Paris (AUP). She has been a member of the Russian movement Memorial since the 1990s, an organization founded by Andrei Sakharov after the fall of the USSR and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.