HBO buys Pussy Riot film
The documentary, Pussy Riot - A Punk Prayer, tells the story of the Russian feminist band who were arrested after a performance last February
US network HBO has picked up the American rights to Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer, a documentary about the Russian radical feminist punk band, whose members were jailed following a performance last year.
Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin, who produced and directed the film – which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday – said they were “thrilled to be working with HBO on bringing this important story to the world".
Pussy Riot members Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were arrested after performing a 40-second "punk prayer", criticising Russian president Vladimir Putin’s ties with the orthodox church, at Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February 2012.
Samutsevich was later released on appeal but her bandmates remain in jail, convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.
The group's plight attracted the support of fellow musicians including Madonna, Green Day, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Björk, Sting and Sir Paul McCartney, who wrote an open letter to the band in the wake of their sentencing.
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