The framing of Russian Film Maker Yevgenia Berkovich.

Oct 2025 : In May 2024, the Russian Government had framed film director Yevgenia Berkovich and eminent writer Svetlana Petrichuk, for the uncompromisable contents of one of their experimental play. They became the first Russian artists since the Soviet Era to be put on trial for the content of their work. It was a show trial. Like all show trials its outcome was preordained. But when professional actors took their own stand, it unveiled the radical ideologies those which have gripped the Russian state.

Director Yevgenia Berkovich was born in 1985, just when the wave of modernity Gorbachev’s Glasnost commenced blowing. For her and her peers, living openly and speaking freely is a virtue. When she moved to Moscow in 2008 and enrolled herself in the Theatre Institute, she had led a completely transparent life. She was in the public eye, surrounded by several, even hundreds of people, including some who were not particularly friendly. It is impossible to do anything in secret in the theatre at all.

By that time, Moscow was booming, galleries and restaurants were popping up across the city, but Berkovich and her friends wanted Russia to be not just glitzy, but also more humane. Her theatre was a way to engage with the people who had been left out in the cold and to reveal them in all their humanity, which was certainly not Fragile.

What was considered to be an act of vengeance:

Berkovich and Petrichuk are accused of publicly justifying terrorism and propagating terrorism using telecommunications networks, including the Internet, at a time not precisely established by the investigation, no later than the 05th August 2019, while at a location not established by investigation.

Yevgenia Berkovich had a criminal intent to make public statements recognising the ideology of Islamic terrorism as correct, deserving of support and emulation, as well as disseminating materials and information aimed at shaping the image.

The prosecutor has accused Berkovich of staging this play, as an act of conspiracy to promote ultraist terrorism, without the knowledge of her actors. The prosecutor had furnished her key evidence; a report comprising 130 pages signed and sealed with a round blue stamp. It’s a report written by an expert in something called Districtology. A Districtology is a comprehensive forensic examination, which has demonstrated that the alleged dramatical performance contains signs of terrorism and propaganda of ISIS, signs of destructivism, justification and romanticisation of male terrorists along with radical feminism towards boys and men.

In her defence, Yevgenia Berkovich reiterated that, “according to the investigator from at least 2019 to 2020, I am a radical Muslim, I have never worn a hijab. I am in a secular marriage with a non-religious man. I eat pork, I take photos on the beach, I’ve never shared any form of Islam, whether radical or otherwise. I consider this indictment illegal”.

Furthermore, Berkovich stated, “the idea that this could be even possible is absurd. Theatre is a public activity even before the play takes to the stage. A performance is done with the participation of dozens of people over the course of at least a week, more often months, sometimes years. It is not a novel that a person can write alone at a desk without telling anyone anything”.

The alleged controversial play – “Finis the Bright Falcon”, is about the women who has been manipulated by terrorists. The prosecutor have alleged that women in physical were hired to portray the stage show.

In response, Berkovich voiced that, “without actually showing the women who were manipulated by the terrorists; only women and not aliens would have served the purpose. They are recognisable characters with recognisable problems. And you have to SHOW the very moment of their delusion, the moment when they genuinely believe the nonsense being poured into their minds. Otherwise, nobody would see I staged the play with the aim of preventing terrorism”.

“All of this was obvious to people who had actually read or seen the play, but not to the court. The defence points out that not a single word of the play has been cited since the trial began. The prosecutor doesn’t even seem to have read the play, which is Denis over Demers”.

Court’s Initiative:

The learned court had summoned the two actress – Yulia Vitkovskaya, and Marietta Tsygal-Polischuk, who had played the female role in the act. The two were asked by the jury to read their respective monologues for a better understanding of the de-facto.

Unlike law or court procedures, is concerned with people’s fates, the roots of their happiness or unhappiness, their rises and falls, their guilt, their responsibility, and who else is to blame in all of this, if art is true? This military courtroom has become a theatre class. The psychology of art is based on transferring a person into an imaginary life, There are two effects here. Creating this imaginary life, and then transferring or jumping into it. As a result, there is a third effect, known since ancient Greece as catharsis. Theatre in Russia has always been imbued with a sense of mission, playing the role of parliament, university, and half-strangled church.

Courts Verdict:

The play, famous The Bright Falcon, reveals signs of the destructive ideology of the international terrorist organisation Islamic State. Through the dissemination of ideologies that deny the Russian state system and the Russian social order, which, in conjunction with the ideology of radical feminism, may lead to the destabilisation of the activities of the state authorities of the Russian Federation. The defendants remain calm. On the basis of the foregoing, the court sentences Evgeny Berkovich and Svetlana Petrichuk to imprisonment for a term of six years.

Rationale:

Nobody had ever heard of districtology before this trial. The report’s author didn’t even make an appearance in court. The defence team is outraged it was even admitted as evidence. There is no such science as destructology, and there is no such type of expertise as destuctological expertise. According to the Ministry of Justice, destructology is not a science, an art, a field of technology or a craft, and therefore does not fall under the concepts of special knowledge defined by the legislation of the Russian Federation. The Ministry said that districtology doesn’t draw on scientific or practical data and therefore contradicts the very principle of forensic examination. Consequently, the document presented to the court as the opinion of an expert destructologist does not meet the requirements for evidence.

The author of the report is a man named Roman Silantyev. He describes himself as a therapist in the field of spiritual security who advises the FSB. The day of Berkovich’s arrest, he boasted that his report was requested by the prosecution. He also said that Jews like Berkovitch were supporting Wahhabis just to spite Russians. The fact that his expertise could not be verified. Was the whole point of it. The

prosecution case was not just against Berkovich. It was against objective reality itself. And while districtology doesn’t reflect reality, it represents something that overrides it.

In November 2022, nine months into the war, Vladimir Putin signed Executive Order No. 809. It’s called the Fundamentals of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values. It was Putin’s first ruling based purely on ideology. It was the starting point for the report presented at the trial. The order targets, quote, ideas and values alien to the Russian people and destructive for Russian society. It labels this destructive ideology. And it identifies its source as not just the West, but also organisations and individuals in the territory of the Russian Federation. Evgenia Berkovich was picked out as one of those individuals. They needed to make an example of somebody. But why her?

Berkovich’s poem encroached on the very foundation myth of Putin’s war. In fact, what she undermined was not just the tenets of Putin ideology, but ideology itself. In shutting her down, Putin was not fighting a political opponent. He was fighting ordinary life, removing people’s right not to be heroes and not to conform, but to live a dignified and independent life, free from ideology and sacrifice. When the state becomes extremist, a display of normal life becomes a criminal offence. This is how Berkovich put it in one of her speeches to the court.

Suvro Sanyal – Team Maverick