![\"Brittney](\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-deadline-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n\tWhen basketball great Brittney Griner headed in February 2022 to Russia, where she played in the WNBA off season, she had no idea what was in store for her. Arriving at the Moscow airport, authorities combed through her luggage and discovered a minute amount of cannabis oil, which the athlete used to treat pain from injuries. Griner, in a rush to make her flight, had forgotten she left an oil cartridge in her luggage. Russian officials promptly arrested her.<\/p>\n
\n\tGriner\u2019s nightmare traversing Russia\u2019s court and penal system is explored in the documentary The Brittney Griner Story, which just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tBrittney Griner during a court appearance in Moscow on August 4, 2022.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI really tried to kind of do a play-by-play in the beginning of the film,\u201d of what happened to Griner in Russia, director Alexandria Stapleton explained as she visited Deadline\u2019s Sundance Studio. \u201cBrittney leaving the States, at the airport, and those first few days for her [in Russia] and what she was feeling and trying to capture that, but also trying to understand what her wife [Cherelle] was feeling, what Lindsay [Kagawa Colas], her agent was feeling as they were trying to scurry to figure out how to get her out. And then the Russian Ukrainian war starts, and we all saw that and were all horrified, but really understanding how for all of them, all the parties involved, that it kind of felt like the door was going to be shut.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe door was shut hard, for political reasons. The film suggests the Kremlin made sure Griner got a very harsh sentence \u2013 9 years \u2013 so it could use her as a bargaining chip as relations with the West deteriorated following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Griner was eventually dispatched to a Russian gulag to serve her sentence. She told us what it was like to be incarcerated there.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe conditions were definitely, definitely dire,\u201d Griner recalled. \u201cThe penal colony, you wake up early, early in the morning, the sun\u2019s not even up yet, and you have to do roll call, and you stand [outdoors] while they walk by with a piece of paper and a piece of wood, and literally mark each person. It\u2019s not like an electronic system or something a little bit more efficient. No. And you\u2019re just standing there in line while it\u2019s snowing. It could be a blizzard, it could be raining, it can be any condition, and you\u2019re just standing there. And that\u2019s when I realized that I had been standing there so long when the snow piled up on my shoulders and on top of my head and I had to knock it off of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the film, Griner describes an industrial scale sewing operation, full of dangerous equipment, where she worked alongside Russian women, some of whom lost digits to the machines.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI was with the \u2018second offenders\u2019 and noisy, yelling, screaming machines, breaking blades flying,\u201d Griner said. \u201cYou look at every woman in there missing fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tBrittney Griner with wife Cherelle Griner<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLeon Bennett\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Brittney Griner Story tracks her career on the court long before the arrest, coming out to her parents, marriage to Cherelle, the arduous process it took to get her out of Russia in a prisoner exchange, and the challenges she faced getting back into shape to play hoops again.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt was hard to find that strength,\u201d Griner conceded. \u201cI have a video on my phone my wife took of me literally crying in the locker room my first time getting back into it. My body was completely different. Everything was just harder. It was an uphill battle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe documentary will air on ESPN at a future date as part of the network\u2019s 30 For 30 series.<\/p>\n
\n\tWatch the full conversation in the video above.<\/p>\n
\n\tDeadline Studio at Sundance presented by Casamigos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When basketball great Brittney Griner headed in February 2022 to Russia, where she played in the WNBA off…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":553355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[202076,5723,62,124933,238129,242505,67,132,68,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-553354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-alexandria-stapleton","9":"tag-espn","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-sundance-film-festival","12":"tag-sundance-studio","13":"tag-the-brittney-griner-story","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115982681032008497","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}