https://www.newyorker.com/news/screening-room/building-a-state-of-fear-in-extremist
The New Yorker, the distributor of Academy Award-winning films, including live action short film winner I’m Not a Robot, has acquired the award-winning live action short film Extremist, directed by Alexander Molochnikov. Extremist will debut on The New Yorker on Friday, December 5, 2025.
Extremist is inspired by the true story of Sasha Skochilenko, a Russian artist and musician who was arrested and imprisoned for 7 years for replacing four price tags with anti-war messages. It explores the personal cost of dissent expressed on a sticker in a time of rising censorship and authoritarianism.
The film premiered at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival, won two student BAFTA Student Film Awards earlier this year (for Best Live Action film and Jury Prize), the Oscar-qualifying Jury Prize at the 2025 New Hampshire Film Festival. Extremist is a recipient of the National Board of Review’s 2025 NBR Student Grant and The Gotham's Focus Features Short Film Showcase award.
Extremist is written and directed by Alexander Molochnikov, a Russian-American film and theater director known for pushing boundaries through bold, humanistic storytelling. The film’s cinematography is by Mikhail Krichman, the renowned Director of Photography behind Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan, Loveless as well as The End and Vermiglio. Jean Chapiro, FormaProFilm are the film’s producers. It stars Viktoria Moroshnichenko (Beanpole, Limonov), Tinatin Dalakishvili (Extraction 2, Hostages, Medea), the 87-year-old veteran actress Lilian Malkina, and Arthur Smolyaninov.
Paul Moakley, the executive producer of video at The New Yorker, said, "'Extremist' is a prescient warning about the rising tide of authoritarianism, not only in Russia but around the world."
The film’s executive producers include the DGA, Primetime Emmy, and Peabody-winning director, producer, and actor Ben Stiller (Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost) and his Academy Award-winning producing partner John Lesher (Birdman), as well as Oscar-nominated director Ramin Bahrani (The White Tiger), Oscar-winning producer Odessa Rae (Navalny), Rick Schwartz (Black Swan) among its executive producers, and BAFTA winning producer Sheryl Crown (Searching For Sugar Man).
While it continues to play the film festival circuit, the film embarks on a film awards campaign that has come entirely unexpected for the award-winning Bolshoi opera and ballet director Molochnikov. When he spoke out against the Russian war on Ukraine in 2022 he was forced from his position as director of a major Bolshoi Theatre play and eventually fled his home city, Saint Petersburg (also the home town of Russian leader Vladimir Putin) for the United States.
"To me, Sasha Skochilenko is a hero of our time,” said Molochnikov. "It’s not just that Sasha changed price tags, but that when the entire power of the machine of the unjust Russian "justice" system came down upon her, she did not break."
He continued: "Our film is inspired by this small story within a huge catastrophe of the Russian war in Ukraine. It explores the boundary between the real and the ephemeral in the consciousness of an artist who is in ultra-stressful circumstances. This is the story of all those who have lived and continue to live in Russia, disagreeing with its policies."
"Of course, this message is not only for Russians and about Russians; it is a story that could become an American one tomorrow. Back in 2012, we in Russia thought we were living in a fairly European, at times democratic country. Authoritarian power comes subtly. One can miss the moment when the choice is before you: to compromise or to stick to your principles. People like Sasha prove that this choice is always there."
Ben Stiller and John Lesher said: "Alexander’s stunning film Extremist is a riveting, cinematic experience that immerses us in the tragedy of anti-war art and activism in Russia where the human right to free speech comes into conflict with an authoritarian system that is tightening its vice. We strongly believe that people around the world need to see this film."
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