One of Russia’s outstanding journalists Andrei Loshak rose to fame with his uncompromising reporting for the NTV channel’s “Profession: Reporter” show. Both his colleagues and the state recognize and celebrate his talent: he won the Russian TEFI TV prize in 2003 and was awarded the “Order for Merit to the Fatherland” first class.
 

Loshak’s signature style is marked by relentless criticism of everything that is wrong with the status quo, which he, an expert diagnostician, notes and highlights in his multipart documentary series. His most noteworthy and resonant works of the past few years include the “mocumentary” “Russia. Full Eclipse,” “The Anatomy of Process” and “From St. Petersburg to Moscow: a Special Path.”

In 2015, Andrei became the editor in chief of Takie Dela — an innovative media platform that combines socially conscious journalism with charity. But he admits to having missed working for television while sitting behind the editor’s desk and jumped at the offer to travel to the world’s remotest corners to film stories about finalists of the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity.

G.M.: The Takie Dela website, where you were editor in chief until recently, allows journalists to actively participate in solving social problems. How did it come about?

A.L.: This is a unique example. Mitya Aleshkovsky, who has a background in photo journalism but is actually a civil activist, came up with this idea: to built up his charitable foundation, we developed a media outlet around it. Imagine: you are reading about something horrible, and you start wondering: “What can I do?” For every story, readers are offered a way to help. You click a few links and donate to a trustworthy organization that saves people. 

G.M.: This project has accumulated a sizeable audience. Does this mean that there is demand in society for such charitable initiatives? 

A.L.: It’s very difficult to force people to read about pain, suffering and illness, and I can’t say that we have a gigantic audience. We got off to a good start, but soon our numbers leveled out: we had up to a million unique visitors in a good month. But it’s a real challenge to force people who have no experience in charity to read this.

In Russia, less than ten percent of the population have ever given money to charity. 

It’s nonetheless important to produce content that people who watch funny cat videos will want to read. We hired a hotspot photo editor from another media, the Russian Reporter, and paid a lot of attention to the visual part of our content. As a result, we have a very important media outlet with a relatively sizeable audience, but there’s plenty more to strive for.

G.M.: Nonetheless, you left your position at Takie Dela when you were offered to film for the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative. Why?

A.L.: I had never been an editor in chief before, and it’s a very important position that takes up all of your time. I wanted to keep filming and this initiative really resonated with me.

At a charity event, a volunteer approached me and asked: “Could you please write more reassuring stories? We already know of all the horrible things you write about, but we have to derive fuel from somewhere.” 

The original vision behind Takie Dela presupposed that 70 percent of the content would focus on drama and tragedy, while 30 percent would have happy ends. Unfortunately, drama turned out to be more prevalent and we had a shortage of positive stories. So when I heard about the Aurora Prize, about the stories of good triumphing over evil, that was something we were lacking. As Aurora Prize Laureate Marguerite Barankitse says, “Love always triumphs over evil.” That’s true, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here by now. It seemed essential to spread this message. 

This prize has a universal context that resonated with me immediately, just like the story of the Armenian Genocide — my father is Jewish. I can feel on the tips of my fingers what Genocide is and what makes it so horrible.

G.M.: How did you prepare for filming?

A.L.: To be honest, I knew nothing about bonded labor on the Indian subcontinent, or about the armed conflict between Seleka and Anti-balaka in the Central African Republic. I knew about emperor Bokassa, the cannibal who kept bodies in the fridge; I had some general knowledge about Africa; I’ve heard about the Rwandan Genocide. But I had no idea about the hellish details that I learned when we got there. We had to watch hours and hours of horribly cruel videos. 

Africa, where the majority of the finalists work, is in many ways the adolescence of humanity. 

People here can be kind and wonderful, but they can also be cruel — just like teenagers. I don’t know of any other place where you can find such large-scale cruelty. We had to communicate by phone with some of the finalists, which was also difficult. For example, it was quite a task to get in touch with doctor Tom Catena, who is working in the Nubian mountains illegally among rebels and under the constant threat of being bombed by the Sudanese government.

G.M.: Were you in any danger while filming these documentaries?  

A.L.: What Fatima is doing is actually illegal, because these kilns are private property. She bribes one of the guards and makes deals with others so they look the other way. We could’ve been arrested at any time. We only spent a short time there and the cameramen complained that they didn’t have the time to film much. 

But at 5 p.m. Fatima said: “This is it, they are coming now, we should leave.” We wanted to film a beautiful sunset there, but that was it — we jumped into the car and drove off as fast as we could.  

We didn’t have a clear idea of what was happening; even more so during the night mission that was very difficult and risky. We weren’t really conscious of the risk; we were simply following our heroine. “Right now we are in the most criminal district of Pakistan, where everything is controlled by the mafia, and basically anything can happen to us,” we were told. “You guys stand here, while we go talk to the police.” We were left on some dark street whose residents had never seen white people before. Kids surrounded us; all these strange people came outside, motorcycle riders swung by. We had no idea what would happen next. Luckily, everything ended well. 

G.M.: You once called Aurora Prize finalists “modern-day saints.” What makes them so special?

A.L.: They are all very different. There’s Father Bernard, for example, a young guy, a graduate of divinity school. He was sent to the Central African Republic, where he found himself in some terrible situations and his incredible qualities shone through. He didn’t have to do what he did, he didn’t have to hide Muslims — nobody would’ve said anything. And then there are people like Doctor Tom, who consciously chose the life of a charitable hermit. He first went to Kenya, but it seemed too easy and quiet for him, so he went further, to Sudan, with its air strikes. 

Tom Catena found what he was looking for — a place that needs him the most. This man is undoubtedly a saint.

He is very devout and he’s bearing his cross. The majority of the finalists were like this — Syeda and Marguerite, too — they are all carrying their crosses. 

Images from Andrei Loshak and his film crew’s travels to film the finalists of the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. All images courtesy of the crew’s Instagram account: @krutoymarshrut (Hero Hunters)