The Russian-Canadian director of documentary Russians At War, which is screening Out of Competition in Venice, has pushed back against suggestions that the film is an attempt to whitewash war crimes by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
Anastasia Trofimova spent seven months embedded under the radar with a Russian army battalion in Eastern Ukraine for the documentary giving a rare insight into the lives of Russian troops.
The work ultimately presents a portrait of ordinary men grappling to make sense of what they are doing on the front, living in harsh conditions and risking their lives thousands of miles from friends and family.
Estimates are varied but between 66,000 to 120,000 Russian soldiers are reported to have died in the invasion, with equally heavy military casualties on the Ukrainian side, as well as more than 23,000 civilian deaths.
Trofimova was asked at the Venice press conference on whether it was “ethical” to humanize Russian soldiers, in light of war crimes committed by Russia’s army during its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
“I find it a little bit of a strange question, if we can humanize or not humanize someone. So, are there lists of people who we can humanize and people who we can’t? Of course, we have to humanize everyone. This is a huge tragedy for our region, first of all, and for the entire world,” replied Trofimova.
“If we don’t see each other as people… these black and white stereotypes about each other, this will only make the war continue. This will only make the hatred grow… unfortunately, that’s sort of the route taken by politicians, but I don’t think that this is the route that regular people should take.”
To that point and in answer to a second question by the same journalist on whether she had seen the Ukrainian films in Venice, Trofimova voiced her disquiet at the ending of Olha Zhurba’s documentary Songs of Slow Burning Earth which is also playing Out of Competition.
The audiovisual diary captures the impact on Ukrainian people and society in the first two years of the ongoing Russian invasion, which began in February 2022.
“I found it to be really good, especially the first 15, 20 minutes… when people just started to find out that the war is beginning… I found it to be really strong,” said Trofimova.
“The ending, though, I wasn’t that much of a fan of because it sort of contrasted Ukrainian kids and Russian kids, with Ukrainian kids thinking about what they can do to build a better Ukraine for the future, and Russian kids were just shown as marching and singing war songs.
“I found this to be playing into that whole narrative that Russians, by definition, are these aggressive and awful people… you know that’s it’s in their blood to be to be this way. “
Trofimova was later pressed by a journalist from Reuters news agency on whether the film was an attempt to whitewash the image of Russian troops, in the face of documented war crimes such as the Bucha massacre, in which more than 450 people were killed in the early days of Russia’s invasion.
The director said she herself had not seen evidence of soldiers committing atrocities over the seven months in which she lived with the battalion, or even any strong desire to kill.
“What I filmed is pretty much what you saw. Obviously, there is a lot of material, but we didn’t hide anything from the audience, and I got the chance to pretty much go anywhere and everywhere,” she said.
“I understand that there are many reports of war crimes, and pretty much, I think in Western media, that’s what Russian soldiers are associated with at this point, because there were no other stories, this is another story, and this was the reality that they lived. If there were war crimes committed, obviously you would see them on screen, but in the seven months that I was there, that was not my experience… it’s important to show other stories.”
Russians at War is produced by respected documentary producers Sally Blake and Philippe Levasseur at Paris-based Capa Presse, and Canada’s Cornelia Principe, who was Oscar-nominated for To Kill A Tiger in the 2024 Academy Awards.
Principe revealed – who is producing under the banner of Raja Pictures (under which Trofimova also takes a producer credit) – said she had initially gotten in contact with the director with the aim of making a wider documentary about how Russians were dealing with the war.
“When I first reached Anastasia and started talked about making a film, we weren’t necessarily going to the front with soldiers. We were interested in what was happening inside Russia after the war started,” she said.
“I live in Canada and I’m reading all the news. The only thing I hear out of Russia is protests, and that’s about it. That was the beginning of the war. So, we started talking about what can we do on the inside of Russia, because we could see more and more that there was sort of this iron curtain coming down. I thought it was really important for someone on the inside be able to tell what was going on, in order to get some perspective on this, this huge tragedy that basically started out of nowhere.”
Following its world premiere in Venice today, Russians in War heads to Toronto for its world premiere in the TIFF Docs line-up next week.
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