‘An Unknown Substance’ chronicles Vladimir Kara-Murza’s fight — and his family’s sacrifice

Welcome back. A new documentary detailing the story of a man who paid the price for speaking out against the war in Ukraine by Russian authorities, his eventual release, and the love between he and his wife that led to his eventual release from prison. Stephen Leichhardt is the director of An Unknown Substance. He's up late with me tonight here on The Final Five. Stephen, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having us, Jim. We really appreciate it. We should point out that you are going to be in DC screening your film at the Double Exposure Film Festival over at the MLK Library this weekend. But let's talk about the project itself because this details a man A man named Vladimir Kara-Murza, you started this. Project before he was in prison. So when you set out to start this, what was what was the focus? And more importantly, who is this man that became the central focus of An Unknown Substance? Yeah. So Vladimir has been an opposition politician based in Moscow, you know, for many, many years. That's where he's from. Originally, he's also a British citizen. He has dual British and Russian citizenship. But in 2015 and 2017, he was poisoned. And that's pretty much when he got on the radar of for sure our government and also on my radar as well. And despite the fact that he'd been poisoned twice traveling back from the United States where he moved with his family to Russia. He just never stopped. Right. So having been poisoned twice and that made me very interested. I was very interested, not just in the politics, but on the personal side. What keeps a person engaged in doing this work when they know not only will it harm themselves, but how could it impact their family? You know, he's got three children. They live just outside D.C. in Virginia. And that's really where it went. I met him at the end of 2021 with this idea of let me film and follow you as you endeavor to do this work. And hopscotch between these two very different worlds. And of course, the war in Ukraine broke out in early 2022. And by April, he spoke out very publicly while being on the news when he was in Moscow. And within hours, he was arrested. So obviously, we're talking a lot about him. And he set out to focus on him. But we learn more about his wife, Eugenia. And she became really a central focus of the film here. That's right. So, you know, I had promised Vladimir I would make a film about him and his work and also his family. And when he was put in prison, the question wasn't how do you make the movie? It was where do you make the movie? Because obviously I'm not going to travel to Russia and be able to interview him in his prison cell. And so at that point, it was just a question of, well, where do we go and who do we follow and what's the the story, which has now changed in many ways, but the The core essential story we wanted to tell was looking at this work and how it impacts your family. And the second I saw a film online of Evgenia speaking out on his behalf, I just had an idea that maybe you could film and follow her. She's a very striking person, very well-spoken, you know fluent in multiple languages, including English. And she's also somebody who's reluctantly out there. She shares his politics and has always supported him. But she really has always been at home, you know, taking care of their three kids and really focused on the family. And so my film ultimately turned into following this person living through both the nightmare of trying to get their husband back, but also straddling these two worlds that he does all the time. How much does that release? How did that change? What you set out to document because clearly this happened before his imprisonment, now he's out. And how did this affect the vision of an unknown substance? Well, you know, first of all, there are at least documented over 2,000 political prisoners in Russia, and that's just what's documented. It's believed to be the number is significantly higher, right? And so if you were to embed with any of those families, they all live with this pain and they all live with this question mark of what's going to happen. So statistically, it felt completely unlikely that this would happen. When it did happen, it changed the film in the sense that it showed that the advocacy work that she'd been doing actually does, it can work, right? If you don't stay at home, if you make phone calls, if you try to get meetings with government officials, if you go on the news, if you do whatever you can to publicize. And to speak out, it's very hard to continue to disappear somebody at that level. And not everybody has the access that she does. Obviously, her husband's well-known enough. You know, he's a Washington Post columnist that was continuing to publish. But had she not sort of done what she did, I'm not so sure his status would have been in the news. I mean, as you know. If it's not being talked about every day, if it's not being covered, it can drift away. And so I think for me as a filmmaker, ultimately, not only did we have what looks like a happy ending, more than anything, we were able to show the film to both of them together at the same time. And that was... By far, one of the most incredibly rewarding experiences because he got to see exactly what his wife was doing while he was in prison. And so I really like to describe that this film, although it's political and it's about advocacy work and it's about free speech, it is also very much just a love story. That's great. It is called An Unknown Substance. Again, the screening will be Saturday, 1 p.m. over at the MLK Library in D.C. as part of the Double Exposure Film Festival. Stephen Leichardt, thanks for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it. By the way, website for the film if people want more information about it? We don't have a website, but you can go to my website, which is stephenleckart.com. Easy. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Thanks, Jim. And we're back after this.