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Venice Documentaries Attempt to Reckon With Russia’s ‘Historical, Transformative, Apocalyptic’ War in Ukraine
Documentaries by Ukrainian filmmaker Olha Zhurba and Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova show radically different perspectives of the war.
In the first weeks of Russia’s military campaign, when many feared that Kyiv itself might fall and Ukraine would be ruled by an occupying army, a massive mobilization effort was underway: to evacuate the country’s most vulnerable, to serve on the frontlines, to marshal medical supplies and other resources for the soldiers and volunteers on the battlefield. Back in Moscow, Trofimova — who left Russia for Canada at the age of 10 and returned 17 years later — witnessed a different, equally unsettling type of normalcy taking hold, as the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts seized control of the narrative around the war, hiding its brutality and human cost from the average Russian. Everything is business as usual.” A veteran correspondent of conflicts in Syria, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere, the director hitched along with a Russian army unit and traveled to the war’s frontline, hoping to puncture that illusion of normalcy while also searching for a better understanding of what the soldiers taking up arms against Ukraine believed they were fighting — and dying — for.
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