Director Of Controversial Doc Explains How & Why She Captured Reality Of Russian Soldiers In Ukraine

https://deadline.com/2024/09/director-controversial-doc-russians-at-war-interview-1236083365/

But the empathetic gaze on these men and women as Russia continues to wage war in Ukraine – in a military campaign that has caused at least 35,000 civilian casualties, including 11,520 deaths; flattened cities, towns and villages, and displaced 16 million people – has provoked outrage in some quarters.

Comments on Deadline to an article on the film out of the Venice press conference, have likened Trofimova to German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who was branded a Nazi propagandist for her films Triumph of the Will and Olympia, capturing the 1934 Nazi Party convention in Nuremberg and the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Berlin.

But unlike Riefenstahl’s films, which were in step with the Nazi Party as they glorified its leaders, military might and ideals around the perfect physique, Trofimova shows a Russian army made up of bewildered, dishevelled and ill-equipped men who are at times openly scornful of the politicians who sent them there.

There is no glory just botched military sorties; hiding, petrified in dug outs; shrapnel-shredded dead comrades being slung into trucks in body bags, and commanders in shell shock as they relive the day’s horrors. Any initial patriotic fervor dissipates, with the handful of subjects who survive to the end of the film questioning why they are there and expressing their lack of desire to fight, but suggesting they have no choice but to follow orders.