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Two new documentaries by Ukrainian filmmakers highlighting the carnage inflicted on their country by Russian aggression – and the insidious influence of Kremlin propaganda – premiered this week at the Sundance Film Festival.
“20 Days of Mariupol,” shown Friday night, depicted in harrowing detail the war that befell a city last year that became one of the bloodiest battlegrounds of the invasion, all captured by video journalists under siege.
“Iron Butterfly,” which premiered on Sunday, chronicles the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 by Russian militants over eastern Ukraine and what it foreshadows today’s larger conflict.
Director Mstyslav Chernov, a journalist who took pictures of the important port city of Mariupol in February and March 2021 in the Russian army, said , he hopes to release his footage as a documentary that will “hit” viewers more than brief newsreel clips.
“Not only does it give insight into the fuller story of the people there, but it also gives people an idea of the scale of the story,” he told AFP.
“20 Days in Mariupol” sparked outrage around the world by telling the behind-the-scenes story of how Chernov risked his life to document a direct Russian attack on a maternity hospital.
The film follows how Chernov and his team desperately tried to escape the city in order to transmit their shocking footage, even as Russian officials tried to dismiss the horrific incident as a hoax by a group of Ukrainian “actors”.
Chernov said Mariupol “was the first to realize how different the Russian narrative of the war was from reality.”
Russian officials “said they were not targeting civilians.”
“You’ll see me in the movies constantly asking people, ‘Did the Russian Federation target civilians?’ You’ll see people answer, ‘Well, they are.'”
Moscow’s weaponization of misinformation is also at the heart of the Iron Butterfly, named for shrapnel from the Russian-made BUK missile that struck airliner MH17 in 2014, killing 298 people.
Combining newsreel and social media footage with intercepted military audio, the film shows how Russia’s response ranged from claiming separatists shot down a Ukrainian military plane to blaming Kyiv for civilian deaths.
It also contrasted the findings of an exhaustive international investigation into the incident with Russia’s claims of another hoax.
Director Roman Liubyi said he tried to be “scientific” and avoid getting angry when editing the film because Russian propaganda was “built around emotional impact and emotional engagement”.
The film highlights the extreme likelihood that those convicted of murder in absentia by a Dutch court in The Hague will serve time behind bars.
“If the airliner crashes have no consequences for the perpetrators, it’s hard to imagine what will happen (in the future) — if the intrusion doesn’t have consequences,” he said.
A third film, “Klondike,” about a family living on the Russia-Ukraine border when violence erupted in 2014, will open in Utah after winning the Sundance Film Festival’s World Film Director Award last year. Re-screening at the high-profile film festival.
Liubyi said Ukraine’s strong performance would only boost the image of the Ukrainian film industry abroad, but warned that “the harder question is how to achieve something here and now for the country, for defense.”
The director hopes to use the Sundance promotion to crowdfund a spy drone for a filmmaker friend who is currently serving in the Ukrainian military.
“I would like to take this opportunity as a Ukrainian citizen to say that we are very grateful to all the international community for helping us defend (our country),” he said.
“But if you’re asking ‘Are there enough weapons?’ Unfortunately, that may not be enough.”
He spoke to AFP on Saturday as senior Ukrainian officials slammed the ally’s “indecision” after Germany refused to provide tanks to back Kyiv in the nearly year-long war.
Lyubi will take his film to the Berlin Film Festival next month.
“What is certain is that international audiences are growing weary of the topic,” he said.
“It’s hard to maintain this enthusiasm, this interest … (but) this fight is about our survival.”
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