Letting the Pussies roar. But will Russia hear them?

The film chronicles the rise of Pussy Riot,the Moscow-based activist group whose 2012 performance of an anti-Kremlin song described as a “punk prayer” inside the main Orthodox cathedral in Moscow attracted international attention. Three of the women were convicted of hooliganism for the 40-second performance; two are still imprisoned. The rest,fewer than a dozen,have carried on,masked crusaders for feminism and free speech.

Their outlaw status has become a rallying cry for dissent in Russia and abroad,backed by the likes of Paul McCartney,Madonna and Amnesty International,and an unexpected display of global girl power.

Without fanfare,two members of the collective slipped into New York recently,to help promote the film and meet,undercover,with supporters. It was their first time in America. They munched popcorn at the theatre as a slew of well-heeled New Yorkers—Salman Rushdie,Patti Smith—sauntered by.

“We don’t share personal information,sorry,” one of the young women said in Russian before the screening.

The members of Pussy Riot are practised at maintaining their mysterious identities. Questions about jobs and ages were off limits; they agreed to be identified only by pseudonyms,Fara and Shaiba. Who was who? “Doesn’t matter,” one of them—let’s call her Shaiba—said.

In their few days in New York,they had been on a kind of anarcho-feminist-cultural show-and-tell. They said they were surprised by the volume and warmth of the reception.

They were also quick to note that,Pussy Riot is not,strictly speaking,a band. “It’s an art group—this is very important,” Fara said. They are multimedia,activist,site-specific performers.

Maxim Pozdorovkin,a Moscow-born,filmmaker who directed the HBO documentary with Mike Lerner,said he was impressed by the solidarity of the women. “They’ve used what happened in the best way possible,to continue propagating their ideas,” he said.

The film has been making the festival rounds and is to be shown in Moscow this winter,though Pozdorovkin said it was unclear how that would work.

They haven’t considered fleeing Russia—“because we love our country,” Shaiba said. “Because we need to fight for human rights,” Fara added.