Sundance 2013: HBO Films buys Pussy Riot documentary

HBO Documentary Films has bought the US television rights to a documentary about the band Pussy Riot.

Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer debuted at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday as part of the world cinema documentary competition.

Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin, who produced and directed the film, said they were “thrilled to be working with HBO on bringing this important story to the world”.

The documentary tells the story of the radical feminist punk collective – three of whom were sentenced to two years in jail last August when a judge found them guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.

Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were arrested and put on trial after performing a “punk prayer” criticising Russian president Vladimir Putin at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral last February.

The group attracted the support of musicians including Madonna, Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Björk, Sting and Sir Paul McCartney in the wake of their sentencing.

Samutsevich was freed from jail last October, as she was prevented from taking part in the performance by security guards.

However, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova had their sentences upheld, and are reported to have been separated and moved to prisons notorious for their tough conditions.