- Welcome to POV.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
Tonight, we introduce you to a homemaker turned activist
who has been called a Russian Erin Brockovich
in the film Black Snow.
The leading lady of this ecothriller
is Natalia Zubkova, a homemaker from little Kiselyovsk
who ends up becoming an enemy of the state.
Zubkova transforms from housewife to citizen journalist
as she finds her voice over the course of the film.
Her journey to becoming an activist starts
when she notices pollution from coal mines
in the form of black particles, or "snow" in the atmosphere.
This discovery motivates her to become a voice for the people
until she is silenced by the Russian government
for political dissidence.
Zubkova even makes a run for political office
until she is smeared by state media.
The film shows the power that one courageous person can have
if they are willing to stand up to a corrupt government,
one, in this case, that is referred to as the coal mafia.
Zubkova finds herself surveilled,
harassed, and even facing death threats.
She has been called an environmental warrior
for trying to hold accountable an authoritarian regime.
And she did all this while raising a daughter
while her husband, a mining company truck driver,
was gone a lot
and not particularly supportive of his wife's cause.
Black Snow is directed
by New York City-based Alina Simone,
a Russian-American journalist and author.
Simone's family was quite familiar with the Russian,
or at the time, Soviet government.
She was born in the Ukraine to Russian-speaking parents
who emigrated to America as political refugees
when Simone was just a year old.
They were more or less forced to leave their country
when her father, a former physics student,
was blacklisted from ever working a job in his field
and forcing him to take a job as a night watchman at a zoo.
Simone says she found this project
when she discovered videos Zubkova made
of the Siberian residents
making pleas to the Canadian government
to accept them as ecological refugees
due to pollution from the mine.
Simone was impressed
with Natalia's fearless and confrontational live videos,
which had gone viral.
Simone uses press reports, archival footage,
and interviews, some from Siberian journalists,
and much of it documented by Zubkova on her YouTube channel.
The director uses audio to accentuate the danger
in this ecothriller,
and keep viewers on the edge of their seats
by using explosions from the mines
and the rattling of trucks
constantly moving back and forth.
Black Snow is Alina Simone's feature film documentary debut,
and it starts now on PBS Wisconsin,
your home for independent film.