Alina Simone | US, 2024, 102'
When residents of a remote Siberian city discover an abandoned coal mine has caught fire beneath their neighborhood, pushing toxic gas into their homes, they turn to homemaker-turned-journalist Natalia Zubkova for help. But after her independent news coverage goes viral, they suddenly find themselves the targets of a massive government disinformation campaign, forcing Natalia to embark on a dangerous and revelatory quest to reveal the full extent of the environmental catastrophe unfolding in their midst. Told over the course of two years, this taut and revelatory thriller charts Natalia’s tumultuous journey covering one of Russia's most dangerous beats, shining new light on the human cost of coal.
Alina Simone is a Ukrainian-American journalist and author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian Long Read, California Sunday, Slate, and NPR, among many others. For seven years, she was a regular contributor to the international news radio show The World, a co-production of the BBC. Her articles have been featured on best-of lists in The Atlantic, NPR and Rolling Stone, and have been optioned for film by major studios. She is the author of an essay collection and a novel, both published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and has taught writing at Yale University. Simone is the recipient of a Logan Nonfiction Fellowship, the Andrew Berends Film Fellowship, a NYSCA/NYFA Film Fellowship, and a Mountainfilm Emerging Filmmaker Fellowship. Black Snow is her first film.
