Screening of 'Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer" doc cancelled in Moscow

Screening of ‘Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer” doc cancelled in Moscow

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, right, and Maria Alekhina, members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, at a news conference Dec. 27 after their release from prison.

By Mark Olsen

Dec. 28, 2013 12 AM PT

Just days after the release of two band members from Russian prisons, the political activists known collectively as Pussy Riot continue to make headlines and spark controversy.

A screening of a documentary on the group, “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer,” had been scheduled for Sunday in Moscow with the newly-freed Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolonnikova in attendance. As reported by Buzzfeed, that screening has been canceled by the order of the head of Moscow’s cultural department.

Directed by Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin, the doc premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festival, received a small theatrical release before airing on HBO and has made the short list of 15 films still vying for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

The canceled screening was said to be the third thwarted attempt to publicly screen the film in Russia.

Since being released Monday, Alyokhina, 25, and Tolokonnikova, 24, announced that Pussy Riot would no longer perform as a musical group and would focus their efforts toward reforming the Russian penal system and exposing human rights abuses.

“The scariest thing about Putin’s Russia is the impossibility to speak and be heard,” Tolokonnikova said during a news conference this week in Moscow, the AP reported. “We still want to do what we said in our last performance for which we spent two years in prison: drive him away.”

In a message on Twitter dated Dec. 28 and translated by Buzzfeed, Tolokonnikova said, “They let us out, but won’t let us show a film about Pussy Riot. That’s the Russian Government.”