Russian dissident film screened at Hoover

 

Lyubov Sobol at the Hoover Institute, June 24, 2025/By Patricia Leslie

Lyubov Sobol is a human rights activist, a former attorney for Alexei Navalny (1976-2024), and a Russian native forced to flee her native country to avoid another prosecution and likely imprisonment.

She and filmmaker Marianna Yarovskaya were at the D.C. office of the Hoover Institute last week for the presentation of Lyuba's Hope, a film about Sobol's life as a dissident in Russia. 

Her hope is that Russia will become a democracy.

Sobol has been arrested multiple times for her opposition to Putin and her campaign for freedom in Russia.

The film opens with the police banging on the door of her residence before they barge in to take her away again, the first of her many clashes with the Russian gestapo.

A 2021 article in the New Yorker says that at one time, Sobol was sentenced to her home every night and banned from using the internet or telephone, accused of aiding Navalny.  

She had to wear an electronic ankle monitor and was prevented from running for public office, declared ineligible by the government. She notably conducted an investigation of Yevgeny Prigozhin* and found that his company poisoned Moscow kindergarteners with tainted food. 

Navalny and Sobol are shown together in several clips; at age 22, she was his organization's first attorney and grew to become Russia's' second most popular public opposition leader.

In 2019 the BBC named Sobol to its Leadership category on its list of 100 "inspiring and influential women from around the world." 

Her efforts to fight for democracy in Russia were honored by a 2019 Sergei Magnitsky Award.

Marianna Yarovskaya, left, and Lyubov Sobol at the Hoover Institute, June 24, 2025/By Patricia Leslie

About 60 came to see the film and packed the Hoover's D.C. office. I sat beside a Swedish economist who, within 60 seconds of greeting me, said that the U.S. today reminds him of 1933 when Hitler rose to power. He said his specialties are the economies of Russia and Ukraine.

Hoover is a conservative think tank, associated with Stanford University and founded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover before he became president. 

Some of its alums include Henry Kissinger, Milton Friedman, and Newt Gingrich. Condoleezza Rice is the director. Its first honorary fellow, named in 1975, was Ronald Reagan.

Sobol, now 37, enjoys her life now in Estonia, but it is not home which, I gathered from the film, is where she longs to be. 

During the screening I was constantly taken aback by her bravery, confidence and determination, none wavering in the Putin onslaught of her rights.  She, driven by her belief that Putin is wrong for Russia, wrong for the world.

The film's producer and Hoover Fellow, Paul Gregory, worked with Yarovskaya on the documentary film, Women of the Gulag, which was short-listed for the 2019 Academy Awards.  

*Prigozhin was the owner of the private military company, Wagner, before Putin had him killed in an airplane crash in 2023. His death resulted from the rebellion he led due to disagreements with Putin and Putin's regime over perceived mismanagement of Russia's campaign in the war for Ukraine.

patricialesli@gmail.com

Film review: 'Las Siameses,' one of the year's best

At the movie's end, the man behind me said, "I feel like I've been to the dentist and had all my teeth pulled."

I felt like I had seen a masterpiece.

I nominate Las Siamesas for "Best International Feature Film" and Rita Cortese for "Best Performance by an Actress in an International Feature Film." She plays the mother, and Valeria Lois is the daughter who does a pretty good job herself in the movie about a mother/daughter relationship.

The Siamese Bond made its DC debut last weekend at Gala Hispanic Theatre where the Gala Film Fest presented six movies by female filmmakers in this "Latin American Innovation."

Las Siamesas is a black comedy which produces audience guffaws with hard-hitting lines the mom and daughter exchange while on a bus trip to the shore to see apartments which the daughter has inherited from her father.

The bus ride takes a back seat to the relationship, but its momentum heightens expectations.

Daylight gradually wanes, travelers disembark from the bus, and all that remains are the two women, two drivers and the audience, a voyeuristic passenger on an existential journey leading (surprise!) to a breakdown.

The ride darkens.

And where there is darkness, loneliness, and consenting adults, there is fire.

The sex scene is the best I can recall, one directed from a woman's perspective without male directors' obligatory exposed breasts. Thank you, Director Paula Hernandez.

The first kiss, the hidden skin, shadows, movements, the passion. Leaving much to the imagination which is as it should be and makes for a better experience.

Listen to the hum of the bus and the magnificent score. That cello! To perfectly match the mood and emphasize the turmoils the daughter and the mother endure.

What appears to be a simple set intensifies the script.

It's bleak, it's funny, it's sad, and arouses emotions, all the moving parts necessary for a successful film. Okay, so maybe the pauses could have been shortened, but otherwise, what to improve?

Las Siamesas has been nominated for several international awards with a victory claimed by Director Hernandez who wrote the script with Leonel D'Agostino.

On another night at the Festival, I saw Ya Me Voy (I'm Leaving Now) by Lindsey Cordero and Armando Croda filmed over two years in Brooklyn, about an undocumented immigrant who wrestles with going home or staying in New York where he can continue his relationships and his collections. It's highly recommended, too, but it was Las Siamesas which drove my fingers to the keyboard.

All films are in Spanish with English subtitles. Carlos Gutierrez curated.

patricialesli@gmail.com