Final Rating: 2.5/5
On September 17, 2024, the Toronto International Film Festival’s artistic director, Cameron Bailey, announced the cancellation of the screening of Anastasia Trofimova’s documentary, Russians at War. The decision came after hundreds of threats, including violence and sexual assault, from protestors against the showing of Trofimova’s film. At the beginning of September, the film caused controversy after its exhibition at the Venice Film Festival, where dozens of Ukrainian artists accused the documentary of being a Russian propaganda of the invasion in Ukraine.
Consequently, the political background of filmmaking became a central topic of conversation rather than its artistic merit. Also, the film provoked heated statements from Canadian politicians, who despised the public funding system of their co-production system to fund a Russian production about the war.
In this sense, Trofimova’s film is more fascinating in the exterior layer rather than in its content. Contrary to the artistic director of Venice Film Festival, Alberto Barbera’s statement that it is an anti-war portrayal of the conflict, the director does not intend to structure it in this manner. Therefore, the director wants to portray the combatants of the Russian front in an unbiased way; she reasons that she did not receive permission from the Ministry of Defense, nor did she fund the film through the Russian Ministry of Culture. Superficially, it attempts to be an anti-war film that aims at understanding the reasons for the soldiers to join in the bloodbath.
Opposing it to a few Russian films that are indeed anti-war works, such as Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent and Elem Klimov’s Come and See, Russians at War is the reflection of a traditional structure that prevents it from achieving an anti-war statement. As an example, the director sympathizes with the figure of Ilya, a Ukrainian man who decides to join the Russian army after the Crimea annexation in 2014.
In this sense, Trofimova understands that the conflict did not start in 2022, when Putin decided to invade Ukraine. It presents its thesis on the ongoing conflict, which dates back before Vladimir Zelensky’s presidency, which began in 2019. It portrays the genuine sentiments of soldiers who sympathize with Putin’s nationalist pride and the defense of Russia against the Western values that spread across Ukraine, according to the soldiers.
Nevertheless, the director’s position is to avoid disruption from the generals and those in command. She didn’t receive press accreditation to shoot on the battlefield, and she is doing it through the empathy of the soldiers who adopt her as one of their own. They grant her uniforms, blankets, and protect her from the enemy’s target. In this sense, Trofimova contradicts her establishment of impartiality, which is not a requirement for documentary filmmaking, as impartiality in documentaries is a myth.
The choice of subjects, points of view, interview writing, and the editing make it impossible to achieve an impartial result. Thus, Trofimova is more interested in sounding impartial and portraying an unseen vision of the war, as the Russian front is usually not portrayed in documentaries about the conflict, rather than developing a coherent documentary structure.
Ultimately, Russians at War by Anastasia Trofimova is more fascinating in the discussions about the artistic contribution to war debates than as a film. It is a shallow expansion of the documentaries about the Russian invasion and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Even though it has fascinating points, it focuses too much on an impartiality and anti-war label that is not achievable. It is an interesting counterpoint to other documentaries made in the last three years, but it does not contribute as a documentary film about the geopolitical moment.
Thank you to Route504 for the screener.
