Taking Fresh Shot, Again, at Debunking Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories

Bough’s connection to the film began three years ago, when Justin Weir, Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and professor of comparative literature, put her in touch with Pozdorovkin, who ultimately asked the artist to work on some animation for the film.

Each character, setting, and architectural space was digitally created from scratch. The characters’ motions (but not their actual visual appearances) were recorded in a studio in Switzerland with professional motion-capture actors, whom Bough directed over Zoom. The recorded data of the movement was then mapped onto 3D models. She explained that each scene is fully 3D underneath, including the characters and environment, with elements she and her team drew by hand over the 3D frames. The novel process in the animation industry was created by Bough and producer Joe Bender.

Jewish actors, including Liev Schreiber, Lake Bell, Ben Shenkman, and Jason Alexander voiced the characters — such as Trotsky, Dreyfus, and Max Warburg. The film was narrated by actor Mayim Bialik.

“When I started, I knew relatively little about these insidious, age-old conspiracy theories. I didn’t know what the Elders of Zion was; I didn’t know about the protocols,” Bough said, referring to a widely distributed work of fiction repeatedly discredited since its emergence in the early 20th century, purporting to describe a Jewish plan for world domination.

The documentary gave Bough the opportunity to dig deep, a research process she found both engaging and distressing.

“It was a heavy film to work on and be immersed in for two years, but it felt good. It felt like every day I worked on it, I was more convinced by the need for the work,” she said. “I felt pressure to make a film that communicated the horror and the absurdity of everything we were learning from the research. You come out of it feeling totally convinced by how harmful and crazy and intertwined these conspiracy theories are but communicating that in an hour and a half is daunting.”

With “The Conspiracy” out — and being shopped around ­— the 23-year-old is finishing her concurrent undergraduate and graduate degrees within the Russia, Eastern European, Central Asian program and plans to graduate next December. The Currier House affiliate has also shifted her work to another difficult topic: the ongoing war in Ukraine. Bough lived in Russia as a child and later studied art at the Russian Art Academy in St. Petersburg. She has centered her past animated and documentary film work on rural Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia.

Using hand-drawn animation, Bough is stitching together a series of vignettes based on interviews with Russians and Ukrainians who have been affected by the war. She opted to use the technique — instead of photography or video — to grant her subjects anonymity, while also highlighting moments of lightness during the war. She hopes to “breathe new life” into their stories and make sure the world does not become desensitized to the conflict.

“I could just wait and make this after the end of the war,” she said. “But it feels like there’s something important about allowing people to tell their stories now.”

Nikki Rojas is a Harvard Staff Writer.This article is published courtesy of the Harvard Gazette, Harvard University’s official newspaper.