'POV' Uncovers Coal Mining’s Hidden Toll on a Siberian Community and One Woman’s Call for Environmental Justice in the Eco-Thriller Black Snow
Overview
Premieres Monday, September 15, 2025 at 10pm on PBS Television in Recognition of Environmental Awareness Month; Streaming Available on PBS App Until December 14, 2025
Download Press Photos • #BlackSnowPBS
Brooklyn, N.Y. – August 19, 2025 – POV, the multi-Emmy® and Peabody Award-winning documentary series, presents Black Snow, the taut and haunting documentary is by first-time director Alina Simone, Oscar®-nominee and Emmy®-winning producer Kirstine Barfod (The Cave, Reunited), and executive produced by renowned environmental activist Erin Brockovich. Centered on the residents of Kiselyovsk, a remote Siberian coal-mining city —infamously nicknamed the “town with black snow” who discover an abandoned mine fire releasing toxic gas into their homes. Demanding not a ban on mining, but the basic right to clean air and water, by living at a safe distance from industrial sites and desperate for help, they turn to Natalia Zubkova, a homemaker-turned-journalist, whose fearless reporting brings their struggle to light. But when her video coverage of the disaster goes viral, it triggers a government-led campaign to cover up the truth and silence her. Natalia embarks on a dangerous quest to reveal the full extent of the environmental catastrophe unfolding in her midst. Black Snow exposes the devastating toll of extractive industries on local lives and underscores how this global industry continues to threaten ecosystems and put at risk livelihoods worldwide, all while amplifying the voices of those fighting back.
Black Snow will make its national broadcast premiere on Monday, September 25, 2025 at 10pm (check local listings) on PBS Television in recognition of Environmental Awareness Month. It will then be available to stream until December 14, 2025 at pbs.org, the PBS App, and the PBS YouTube Channel. Now in its 38th season, POV remains America's longest-running nonfiction series.
On June 6, 2019, Kiselyovsk residents made an extraordinary appeal directly to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for environmental asylum. Filmed in a barren field, they explain that an abandoned Soviet mine has caught fire beneath their neighborhood, and families living nearby are grappling with toxic air and contaminated water. Kiselyovsk, one of Russia’s most polluted cities, has been transformed by nine massive open-pit coal mines and three processing plants operating with little oversight, but with tacit government approval.
The video’s source was Natalia Zubkova, a 42-year-old mother of three, whose YouTube channel — consisting mostly of live, self-narrated, cell phone videos — became the town’s only independent news outlet. Convinced that coal pollution caused her own daughters’ health problems, she began investigating the city’s environmental issues despite her coal truck driver husband’s warnings. When fresh snow fell black from unfiltered coal emissions, Zubkova’s critical reporting filled a void left by government-controlled media, making her a target and on the government’s blacklist.
Within 48 hours of publishing the Trudeau appeal, the video was picked up by Alexei Navalny’s network, broadcast on Canada’s CBC news, prompting an official response from the Canadian government and garnering the attention of the state’s powerful governor, Sergei Tsivilev, a coal oligarch married to Putin’s cousin.
Filmed over four turbulent years across Russia and Eastern Europe, Black Snow is a revelatory eco-thriller that shines new light on the human cost of coal and the clandestine tactics of Russia’s modern surveillance state.
"In August 2019, I set off to film a maverick journalist who was speaking out about the environmental disaster engulfing her Siberian hometown, said director Alina Simone. “For five years, we hung on to this unbelievable and thrilling story, one that asks hard questions about the real cost of ‘cheap energy’ and the dire sacrifices made by mining communities for its sake.
"POV is a crucial outlet — an escape hatch, even — from stories that have been pre-vetted by algorithms, but rarely encompass the strange, gorgeous, gut-wrenching aspects of life that are as unpredictable as the human heart itself. These tend to be the stories we remember."
“Black Snow exposes the ongoing environmental dangers of coal mining and its devastating impact on close-knit communities,” said Chris White, Executive Producer, POV. “Director Alina Simone brings global resonance to this story, showing how the consequences of mining have affected nations around the world and continue to be a large threat to our ecosystems.”
Black Snow made its world premiere at CPH:DOX (2024), where it won the F:ACT Award for Best Investigative Documentary, and its North American/US premiere at DOC NYC (2024), earning a Special Jury Mention. The film went on to win the Sustainable Future Award at the Sydney International Film (2024), the Activist Lens Award at Movies That Matter (2024), and the International Green Film Award from Cinema for Peace. Additional honors include the Cinema Eye Spotlight Award and SIMA Documentary Jury Prize. Black Snow was an official selection at numerous 2024 festivals, including: It's All True International Documentary Film Festival (Brazil), Hong Kong International Film Festival (China), Millenium Docs Against Gravity (Poland), Sydney Film Festival (Australia), Sheffield Doc Fest (England), MDOC Melgaço International Documentary Film Festival (Portugal), Dokufest (Kosovo), Lemesos International Documentary Festival (Cyprus), Visioni dal Mondo (Italy), Folkestone Doc Fest (England), Another Way Film Festival (Madrid), EQUIS (Ecuador), and Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival (Budapest and other cities in Hungary).
Raves:
"The film revealed the vast reach of these environmental issues and the extraordinary lengths a mother will go to protect her children, family, and community. Black Snow reminds us that we are all connected through our environment, and it’s a global concern that affects us all."
— Erin Brockovich, Executive Producer, Black Snow
"...a searing exposé that places ordinary people at the center of a global environmental crisis…”
— Screen Daily
“The film is both an eco-thriller, and an awe-inspiring portrait of Russian mother-turned-environmental journalist Natalia Zubkova.”
— Annika Pham, Variety
Black Snow is a production by Nordland Pictures, LLC and Prettier in the Dark Productions, LLC. Alina Simone is the director. The producers are Kirstine Barfod and Alina Simone. The cinematographers are Alina Simone and Natalia Zubkova. The editor is Aleks Gezentsvey. The executive producers are Bill Gerber, Judith Krupp, Alina Simone, Kirstine Barfod and Erika Dilday and Chris White for American Documentary.
Photos
Credits
Director: Alina Simone
Producers: Kirstine Barfod, Alina Simone
Cast/Participant: Natalia Zubkova
Executive Producers: Bill Gerber, Judith Krupp, Alina Simone, Kirstine Barfod, Erika Dilday, Chris White for American Documentary
Cinematographers: Alina Simone, Natalia Zubkova
Languages: Russian with English subtitles
Countries: Russia, Georgia
Year: 2024
About the Filmmakers
About the Filmmakers
Alina Simone, Director, Producer, Cinematographer, Black Snow
Alina Simone is a Ukrainian-born journalist and award-winning filmmaker whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian Long Read, The Atlantic and NPR, among many others. In 2024, her directing debut, Black Snow, was awarded the F:ACT Award for Best Investigative Documentary at CPH:DOX and the Sustainable Future Award at the Sydney Film Festival. She is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow.
Kirstine Barfod, Producer, Black Snow
Kirstine Barfod is a Danish film producer and the founder of Nordland Pictures, established in 2022 and based in New York. She is an Oscar®-nominated and Emmy® and Peabody Award-winning producer and executive producer of non-fiction longform and series The Human Race (CPHDOX). Best known for Black Snow (CPH:DOX), The Cave (TIFF), and Reunited (Hot Docs), Kirstine has made significant contributions to the film industry with her compelling and socially impactful documentaries. Her work led to her invitation to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2019.
About
About POV
Produced by American Documentary, POV is the longest-running independent documentary showcase on American television. Since 1988, POV has presented films on PBS that capture the full spectrum of the human experience, with a long commitment to centering women and people of color in front of, and behind, the camera. The series is known for introducing generations of viewers to groundbreaking works like Tongues Untied (1989), Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1992), Rabbit in the Room (1999), Of Civil Wrongs & Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story (2001), Made in L.A. (2007), American Promise (2013), Not Going Quietly (2021), While We Watched (2022), A House Made of Splinters (2022), The Last Out (2023) and the mini-series And She Could be Next (2020). Throughout its history POV has featured the work of award-winning, innovative filmmakers including Jonathan Demme, Laura Poitras, Nanfu Wang, Frederick Wiseman, Emiko Omori, Janus Metz Pedersen and Ava DuVernay. In 2018, POV Shorts launched as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries. In 2024, Indiewire named seven POV films in its roundup of “The 50 Best Documentaries of the 21st Century”: Faya Dayi (2021), The Mole Agent (2020), Minding The Gap (2018), Cameraperson (2016), The Look of Silence (2015), The Act of Killing (2013) and After Tiller (2013). All POV programs are available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS App, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website.
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POV films and projects have won 48 Emmy Awards, 28 George Foster Peabody Awards, 16 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three Academy Awards® and the first-ever George Polk Documentary Film Award. Learn more at pbs.org/pov and follow @povdocs on social media.
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American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia organization dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback to educational opportunities and community participation.
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