Featuring Pussy Riot. Rating not available. In Russian, with English subtitles.

“Their biggest mistake,” says one prosecutor interviewed for this sharply assembled documentary, “was that they performed for an audience that didn’t understand what they were doing.”

The case he’s discussing, somewhat disingenuously, involves three members of Pussy Riot, a free-floating collective of feminist-minded conceptualists working in a society that has essentially criminalized modern art since the 1920s. Directors Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin draw parallels between Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian Russia and the Soviet system. And in biographical asides, they show how the idealistic side of Bolshevism influenced Maria Alyokhina (aka Masha), Katya Samutsevich, and the extra-charismatic Nadya Tolokonnikova, famously imprisoned for taking part in a 40-second performance inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

Like most of the balaclava-wearing group’s public stunts, it was a poorly planned, hard-to-grasp statement (with prerecorded backing tracks and no live guitars) about corruption—here declaring that their government has co-opted the formerly marginalized church to help stifle opposition and make life hell for minorities.

During the young women’s show trial, opponents included patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, white-haired gents resembling reformed bikers who tell us we were better off in the 11th century, “when they burned witches”. Modern, state-run television isn’t much better; in one clip, what appears to be a debate about issues raised by protesters quickly devolves into Pussy Riot: Foul Demons or Worthless Hooligans?.

In another media-derived moment, Putin attempts to trick a U.K. interviewer into saying the band’s name in Russian—despite the fact that they don’t have a Russian name. His look of smug satisfaction after failing to manipulate a foreign journalist says volumes about the weasel-eyed KGB veteran who could lead his country for another 10 years.

After this 90-minute film was completed, Putin released the Pussy Rioters—just in time for the Olympics—and we have since seen video of police beating them with whips and calling them “whores” (the name men often use for women who wouldn’t be with them for any amount of money). But these messy provocateurs remain unflappable. What they do may not really be music, but it sure is rock ’n’ roll!