Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin’s compelling documentary film Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer has been selected to be the Opening Night Film of the 2013 Sheffield Doc/Fest in the UK.

Filmed over the course of six months, the film tells the incredible story of three young women: Nadya, Masha and Katia. As members of the feminist art collective Pussy Riot, they performed a 40 second “punk prayer” – disguised in their now famous colourful balaclavas – inside Russia’s main cathedral, which led to their arrest on charges of religious hatred.

Lerner and Pozdorovkin not only gained unparalleled access and exclusive footage to the trial that reverberated around the world but also observed up close the three young women and their families as they fight back against a justice system that seems impervious to logic.

The 2013 Sheffield Doc/Fest will run June 12 – 16, 2013