The Sparrow
A feature-length documentary about Memorial — the legendary Russian human-rights NGO that uncovered the scope of Stalin's terror — and the regime that shut it down.
A feature-length documentary about Memorial — the legendary Russian human-rights NGO that uncovered the scope of Stalin's terror — and the regime that shut it down.
For more than thirty years, the Russian NGO Memorial pieced together what the Soviet state and its successors had spent a century erasing: the names of Stalin's victims, the locations of mass graves, the shape of a terror that touched every Russian family. In December 2021, Russia's Supreme Court ordered Memorial dissolved.
The Sparrow is a feature documentary about Memorial's archive, the people who built it, and the long Russian habit of erasing memory — told as the regime tries, once again, to make a country forget.