A documentary accused of portraying Russian soldiers as victims and legitimizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked outrage at film festivals in Venice and Toronto.
Russian-Canadian documentary filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova’s “Russians at War,” which follows soldiers through seven months of war, premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday.
“It’s so confusing here,” one soldier states in the film. “I don’t even know what we’re fighting for.”
“Russia and Ukraine have always been inseparable,” said another. “I miss the brotherly union.”
Critics say the comments propagate the false narrative pushed by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine cannot exist as an independent state.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed and millions displaced in the two-and-a-half years since Russia launched its brutal invasion of the country.
United Nations investigations have found evidence of war crimes by Russian forces, including rape and the deportation of children to Russia.
But Trofimova said she never witnessed that during her time embedded with its troops.
“To me, the biggest shock was to see how ordinary they were,” she said, according to Euronews.
“In Russia, they are these heroes who never die,” she said. “In the West, they are mostly war criminals, war criminals, war criminals.”
Further blowback came over news that the film is set to be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday, and that it received over $250,000 in funding from the Canadian government, the Kyiv Independent reported.
“The filmmaker — like Putin and his regime — plays an interesting game with these people,” said Ukrainian film producer Darya Bassel, who also has a film being screened in Venice. “They deny the simple ability to possess dignity and to think and decide for themselves,” she said on Facebook.
The film is “pure Russian propaganda,” she added, and “presents a very distorted picture of reality, spreading false narratives.”
