 In January 2013 a film on the Pussy Riot case was released by British documentary film making company Roast Beef Productions . The working title was Show Trial : The Story of Pussy Riot ; subsequently it was released as Pussy Riot : A Punk Prayer . It was directed by Mike Lerner and Maksim Pozdorovkin , and featured publicly available footage of the court proceedings and interviews with the families of the band members , but no interviews with the band members themselves . It debuted at the 2013 Sundance film festival , after which Pussy Riot 's Yekaterina Samutsevich fielded questions from the audience via Skype . Among other things she reiterated that she had no intention of turning Pussy Riot into a commercial venture . The film won a World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for " Punk Spirit " at the festival . The HBO network subsequently bought the U.S. television rights to the film despite lukewarm critical reviews . The BBC showed the film in October 2013 ; the British newspaper reviews were favourable . The film was among 15 documentaries short listed for a 2014 Academy Award , however it did not make the final list of nominees . 
