The So-Called Radical

For the first time, a Western volunteer killed while fighting for Russia in its war against Ukraine becomes a central figure in a new Kremlin myth.
Michael Gloss is not an exception. He is one of many young men from stable, privileged backgrounds in the West who have radicalized and gone to fight on Russia’s side in Ukraine.
The film reconstructs the final year of his life, step by step, to reveal how propaganda succeeded in reshaping his worldview—and how a pacifist climate activist became a soldier in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Through the people he met across countries, movements and subcultures, the film exposes the mechanisms by which disillusionment with the West, identity crisis and the search for moral certainty turn idealism into political extremism.
But this story matters for another reason.
It is precisely Michael’s story that Vladimir Putin uses to build a new propaganda narrative — a myth of the courage and righteousness of the Russian soldier, appropriating the death of a Western young man into Russia’s wartime legend.
By focusing on one life, the film reveals a much larger and urgent phenomenon: how and why young men from good families in Western democracies become vulnerable to radical ideologies — and end up fighting on the side of an authoritarian war.