A banned profession: The 1991 August Coup. How Russian journalists won and then lost (2021)

This documentary focuses on the deterioration of the freedom of the press in Russia over the last 30 years. On 19 August 1991, Soviet citizens woke up and saw Swan Lake ballet on TV. A coup d'etat began in the USSR: hard-line Communist party members tried to remove President Mikhail Gorbachev from power. The GKChP members attempted to take away freedom from the media. The journalists then fought the censorship and won. Today, while a prominent Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov wins a Nobel Peace prize, independent news outlets in Russia face hostile actions from the government. In 2021 only Russian authorities labeled dozens of journalists as "foreign agents". As a result, many of them opted to leave Russia. The documentary authors are trying to determine how Russian journalists got in such circumstances after total freedom in the '90s?