“The repressive machine began to operate”: An Interview with Beata Bubenets

In 2019, a middle-aged man from the Republic of Sakha sets out on foot from its capital, Yakutsk, to Moscow to exorcise a demon from the Kremlin: Vladimir Putin. Pushing a makeshift cart loaded with wooden poles for a tent and basic provisions, Alexander (or Sasha) Gabyshev, with his long hair, a toothy smile missing a few teeth, and a fighting spirit, quickly became an internet sensation. A self-proclaimed shaman-warrior, the Sakha native began to attract a following of like-minded men who joined him on his journey. For context, walking from Sakha to Moscow takes more than two years. Nearly 7000 kilometres away from the Russian capital, Sakha Republic is home to ethnic Sakha and several of Russia’s Asian Indigenous groups, including Evenks, Evens, and Buryats.

Beata Bubenets’ observational documentary, A Shaman’s Tale (2024), follows the shaman as his journey is abruptly halted by arrest. Brought back to Yakutsk, Alexander Gabyshev underwent a psychiatric evaluation and was placed under house arrest. At home, Gabyshev continued his activism – recording YouTube videos and giving interviews to international outlets like The New York Times and The Guardian. However, in October 2021, the court ordered his compulsory confinement in a psychiatric hospital in Vladivostok, 9000 kilometres from the Kremlin, where he remains to this day.

In her previous films, Bubenets documented the Maidan revolution, the annexation of Crimea, and the war in Donbass. She films these overtly political stories with a non-interventionist approach, shaped by her training at the documentary school of Maria Razbezhkina. According to this method, when making a film, filmmakers must avoid using non-diegetic music, direct-to-camera interviews, voice-overs, tripods, and zoom lenses. They are “hunting for truth,” as Razbezhkina herself puts it. Beata’s Razbezhkina-inspired style feels not only artistically appropriate but also politically ethical – especially in a context where narrative control is a tool of the state.

During our conversation, Beata used the term “Yakutia”, a more-widely recognised name, while I used the preferred self-designation of the Sakha people – “Sakha Republic”. Both terms refer to the same geographical location.

– B.K. 

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Beata, this is your first film set in the Republic of Sakha. Tell us how this project came about and how you met the protagonist.

I was born in Yakutsk, but I’ve hardly lived there. When I was a child, we moved to Central Russia, though I carried childhood memories of Yakutia. I always wanted to return to see how those memories compared to reality. When I arrived in 2019, I had no other projects at that time, but I was looking for the next story for a film. I wanted to shoot the next documentary in Yakutia because it has a very cinematic atmosphere and landscape, very different from the Russia most people know.

A Shaman’s Tale

When I got to Yakutsk in late March, my friends started sending me videos of Sasha (Gabyshev), a strange traveller walking to Moscow. They were saying, “Beata, look at this interesting character – you should make a film about him.” I can’t say I was immediately interested. For one, he was already in the Amur region. And second, it was a political story, and I had already made films about opposition figures fighting Putin, including in Ukraine.

At first, it was unclear whether the shaman’s movement would grow into something significant. But after a few weeks, the story didn’t fade, it actually gained momentum. More people started joining him. I saw that many Russians believed in him. He was becoming a new public figure, someone people placed their hopes in, especially ordinary Russians. A circle of followers and admirers began to form. That’s when I realised this was truly an event worth documenting. I saw potential in the story, and I started to believe in it too. Around that time, Vlad Ketkovich, who has produced many independent documentaries in Russia, got in touch. He was also interested in the shaman’s story and helped with the initial financing.

What was your initial vision for the film, and how did it change during the process? It must have been impossible to predict the shaman’s actions – or how the authorities would respond.

I travelled to Yakutsk with my co-author Mikhail Bashkirov, a playwright and anthropologist who had worked a lot with national theatres in Russia. Initially, I was drawn to the idea of ​​a road movie, following Sasha as he walked from Yakutsk to Moscow. He was covering about 15-20 kilometres per day, so in theory, he would reach Moscow in two years. We imagined capturing places in Russia that are rarely shown, beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg.

But then people started joining him every day. The shaman himself had a plan: that by the time he reached Moscow, he would not be alone but would have hundreds of followers. As his popularity grew and then he was arrested, the road movie transformed into something more familiar in the Russian context – a story about political repression. The repressive machine began to operate.

Why do you think the shaman resonated so strongly with ordinary Russians? He had no clear political ideology – he was neither a right-wing extremist nor a liberal leftist. What drew people to him?

Exactly, Sasha didn’t have a defined political stance. At some point, he had a revelation about his mission. According to his account, after his wife died, he lived in the forest for years, far from society. That’s where he began preparing for his journey – quietly, without announcing it in advance. He truly believed in it. It wasn’t a political protest from his perspective, it was a spiritual mission.

I remember a funny moment during filming. At one table, we had people with wildly different political views: a liberal journalist, a pagan nationalist, a communist, and a free-spirited poet. They were all arguing, and the shaman interrupted them and said, “Your differences don’t matter. What unites us is the fight against Putin.” His supporters weren’t the liberal intelligentsia from St. Petersburg or Moscow. He attracted people who, in many ways, represent the real majority of Russia.

A Shaman’s Tale

I read Mikhail Bashkirov’s article, “Gabyshev: Identity at the Intersection of Two Cultures”, where he compares the warrior shaman to the medieval “holy fool” archetype. He says the shaman challenges the typical labels like “madman”, “attention-seeker”, “simple man”, or “Rasputin-like mystic”.

Mikhail developed a theory that the shaman resembles the medieval yurodivy – the holy fool. On a subconscious, or even genetic, level, people in Russia still recognise and respond to this kind of figure. In history, such holy fools were believed to possess mystical powers and could even challenge the tsar, like Saint Basil the Blessed, or like Joan of Arc in France. These were folk figures, sent to save their people. I think Gabyshev awakened that deep cultural memory in Russians. 

Strangely enough, he was more popular among white Russians than among the Yakuts. In Yakutia, many people didn’t take him seriously or said he wasn’t a real shaman. But those who did believe in him accepted his spiritual power, and that might be why the authorities feared him. During his arrest, for example, riot police came with some shields bearing strange symbols, as if they were afraid of some kind of divine retribution. 

There was a similar episode in Kazakhstan with performance artist Askhat Akhmedyarov. He dressed as a shaman and tried to stop lake drainage projects in Astana. Eventually, construction trucks and cranes just stopped. People still have this primordial fear or respect for shamans, even though Askhat is an artist, not a real shaman. Maybe it didn’t matter whether Gabyshev was a real shaman or not. 

There was even a scientific conference in Yakutia debating that question. But the reality is that traditional shamanism was largely wiped out by Soviet repression in the early 20th century: shamans were executed, their families persecuted. Children were sent away and raised without knowing their heritage. Shamanism was passed down patrilineally, and in that context, it couldn’t survive. It was only in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that a revival of shamanism began. But what’s happening in Russia now feels like a repetition of colonial Soviet-era repression, aimed at the cultures of national republics.

There’s a moment in the film when the shaman criticises Yakut passivity, saying that people don’t dare to hold mass protests. But you also showed Yakutsk residents, standing outside in winter with signs demanding his release. How do you see the Sakha Republic’s desire for self-determination in this decolonial context?

After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, decolonial discourse intensified, in the former Soviet states and within Russia itself. Yakutia provides vast natural resources that feed the rest of Russia. Yet these same resources are exploited by the central government. Just like in Kazakhstan, nuclear tests were conducted in Yakutia that left lasting damage to people and the environment.

After February 24, local activists began speaking more openly about this exploitation of natural resources and about discrimination faced by Yakut young people who come to Moscow to study. There, they are treated as second-class citizens, although they are citizens of Russia. Still, many don’t realise the colonial nature of Soviet policies, because propaganda about the “friendship of peoples” was so deeply embedded.

Flight of a Bullet

Even now?

Yes, that active propaganda in all national republics continues today to suppress separatist sentiment. Many people from Yakutia and Buryatia are sent to fight in Ukraine, while people from Central Russia mostly serve as volunteers or contract soldiers. Some see military service as a form of heroism, like the WWII generation. Others are simply afraid. The memory of Soviet-era repression is still very present. Protests were brutally suppressed, and today’s decolonial activists often face threats or are forced into exile. Those who remain take significant risks.

There is a great podcast series called The Republic Speaks, created by dissidents from the national republics. It explores colonial histories of the regions and how people live today. It seems to me that in the Sakha Republic, cinema has become a soft form of resistance against dominant pro-Russian narratives.

Yes, absolutely! Yakut cinema developed because Russian cinema wouldn’t cast Yakut actors and/or support their stories. Russia is a multi-ethnic country, but in its cinema, the lead characters are almost always white Russians, and Asians are relegated to supporting roles. So at some point, Yakut directors began making their own films, in the Yakut language, for Yakut audiences. Yakut cinema began to develop because it received good support from its own people. That’s why Yakut cinema was able to grow. I’m glad that many Yakut filmmakers are now submitting their work directly to international festivals, rather than only to the Moscow International Film Festival.

In Kazakhstani society, there is strong solidarity with other national republics due to our shared colonial history. But we also exist in a kind of grey zone – not Asian enough for East Asia, and not white enough for Europe. Now that you live in France, how do you live between these two worlds?

I’ve lived with this complex identity my whole life. I was born in Yakutsk, raised in Nizhny Novgorod. I’m half Yakut, half Ukrainian. So to the Yakuts, I’ve always seemed more Russian, and in Central Russia, of course, I was seen as an outsider. But I view this as an advantage. It’s allowed me to make films in Ukraine, in Yakutia, and in Central Russia because I understand the broader Russian context. Now I live in France, and that opens up new creative possibilities. For example, I have a new project in mind that’s not directly related to Russia, but to the broader post-Soviet space.

You follow the Razbezhkina school’s approach of direct observation and non-intervention. Why does that method work for you when telling the stories that interest you?

I think it’s an approach that embraces the unknown, where you step into situations without knowing what will happen. With the help of the camera, I explore my characters, events, and the surrounding reality. And it’s through the camera that I begin to discover things I didn’t know before. The “grey areas,” which once seemed invisible or undefined to me, slowly begin to take shape, gaining form, outline, and colour. I really enjoy that process. For me, the observational method is a form of research. It’s the ideal way to study reality and bring those grey zones into focus. I don’t go into a film with ready-made answers; I come with questions. And it’s very important to have strong motivation, which comes from inner curiosity and a deep passion for the subject.

Do you keep in touch with the shaman? What’s happening with him now?

He’s still being held in a psychiatric clinic. Of course, we can’t contact him directly, but he’s allowed to call his lawyer, friends, and family from time to time. So through them, we’re able to pass along information and keep some form of communication going. Whenever possible, we try to send him greetings from the people who’ve seen the film and sympathise with him. Even from a distance, he still receives rays of solidarity.