war

The Ukrainian town of Nikopol has been a prime target for Russian weapons for several reasons. A giant dam used to stand nearby. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is located just a short distance away. With the destruction of the reservoir, people lost their source of drinking water. And the power plant lost its cooling system. Yet, many people, like Father Bohdan, remain in this God-forsaken place …A report from a place that has been struck by blows of biblical proportions, yet one where people continue to live.“Through Bohdan's story, the film seeks answers to the question of why people remain in their homes even though every day could be their last.“ — TPS Remízek

The Russian occupiers came and took almost everything from Svitlana, but they could not rob her of her memories of places and moments from her previous life. This tragic portrait of war losses thereby becomes a meditation on values that are enduring, precisely because no brute force can tear them from individual consciousness, violate them, or bury them. “Focused on the details often overlooked, her films explore the quieter sides of life, giving space to what often remains unsaid.” Source: FilmFreeway.

In January 2009, viewers witnessed the most dramatic live broadcast in the history of Israeli television. In a phone call from Gaza, Palestinian doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish could be heard crying after the Israeli army had just killed his three daughters in a bombing raid on his home. The father's despair moved history, and immediately after the tragedy was publicized, the Israeli prime minister declared a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine. However, this did not last long, so Abuelaish, known as the Nelson Mandela of the Middle East and nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize, set himself the goal of ending the conflict between the two countries. Only then would the deaths of his daughters have meaning, says the doctor, who rejects hatred and treats both Palestinians and Israelis. This straightforward and emotional portrait, whose title refers to Abuelaish's book I Shall Not Hate, shows how to heal an entire society. “We need courageous leaders with moral courage. Risktakers who think of the human goal and future, not of staying in power. Because history will never forget them.” — quote from the movie

There was no other choice for her. She had to go and fight the evil that had taken over her country. An evil she had experienced first-hand in 2014, when she spent four days in Russian captivity in Donbas. She was so determined that she was able to leave her young son behind for an extended period of time. Now she composes letters to him in her head as helicopters fly overhead and mortar shells explode nearby. This evocative documentary portrait of life in close proximity to the front lines builds on the contrast between an incredible will to live and the duty to risk one's life for a higher cause. Not for the nation, not for the homeland, but for the free future of one's own children. “My camera has been with me since the first day of the full-scale war.” — Alisa Kovalenko

In another of his portraits of everyday life in Ukraine during the Russian occupation, Sergei Loznitsa takes us on an excursion to the National Museum of Natural History in Kiev, one of the largest in the world. Together with a school class, we attend a lecture on palaeontology between two air raid sirens. The teacher talks enthusiastically about dinosaurs and spiny fish, and the children listen to him with curiosity and amusement. For a moment, the lively commentary transports us along with them to a world millions of years away, where Russian missiles have not crossed the sky, but in many ways was as ruthless as the current reality of war.

The incomprehensible clamour of loudspeakers, the honking of cars, the backs of boys gazing into the distance, fires, trash, deserted houses, and a group of soldiers inhabit a sensually saturated landscape dominated by functional chaos. The mosaic of micro-events with several visual planes is reminiscent of the paintings of Pieter Bruegel, with the difference that this is not a genre scene painted by the Dutch master. A single-shot testimony in real time, piece by piece, reveals the violent clash between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers on the West Bank. It depicts the mechanism of occupation, which cyclically closes in on itself and begins where it ends. “By reframing, invoking the off-screen or playing with cuts or the duration of shots, the artist seeks to create spaces that allow us to regain mobility and critical spirit.” Source: https://juliettelemonnyer.com/about

Several times a year, the sky above France turns red. These are grains of sand from the Sahara, and they can resemble a starry sky, or the graininess of a television screen. However, they contain radioactive cesium-137, which was created when the French tested nuclear weapons in Algeria. This testimony, which was never supposed to leave the military base, shows the impact of war on human society and the landscape. “With my films I want to make complex (invisible) social, political, and economical issues visible.” — Katja Verheul

Claustrophobic war training as a gruelling routine, yet constantly permeated with terrifying tension. This is what training on the Louise-Marie NATO combat ship looks like in the documentary Standby. The observational film follows the crew of new and experienced sailors, as well as several female sailors, as they go through a series of simulated enemy attacks, lectures, evenings in the gym, and casual conversations over dinner. Everything is just for show, but it is clear from the many comments made by the commanding officers that the same situation could very soon arise in real life. The film does not have a central character, but focuses on several personalities, which it does not examine very closely as individuals; it is more interested in how they fit into the overall dynamics of the team. Concentrated in the space-time of a single war machine, the film seems to suggest that, despite all the military drill, it is impossible to fully prepare for real war – and this awareness is constantly present in the gestures and behaviour of the unit. “I see a lot of people, a lot of faces that I know, but I see at least as many faces I don’t know, a lot of young people. A lot of experience and little experience, together, adds up to enough experience to do the very thing for which you’re here today.”

Rafah, a city on the border between Gaza and Egypt, became the target of four days of bombing after the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier on August 1, 2014. The Forensic Architecture collective analysed footage from mobile phones and satellite images and compiled an accurate spatiotemporal model of the events using synchronization, 3D modelling, and examination of the shapes of smoke clouds, shadows, and craters. This served as evidence for Amnesty International, which did not have physical access to the area, to accuse Israel of war crimes. Pure work with digital traces is transformed here into an image of the world—a detective visualization of destruction and its impact on the civilian population. “Today, artists are engaged in investigation. They probe corruption, human rights violations, environmental crimes and technological domination. At the same time, areas not usually thought of as artistic make powerful use of aesthetics. Journalists and legal professionals pore over opensource videos and satellite imagery to undertake visual investigations. This combination of diverse fields is what the authors call ‘investigative aesthetics’: the mobilisation of sensibilities associated with art, architecture and other such practices in order to speak truth to power.” — Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman, Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth, Verso Books, 2021

 In 1967, extensive archaeological excavations took place near the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, during which over 16,000 objects belonging to deportees were uncovered. The excavations became the subject of a 14-minute documentary film, shot on location by director Andrzej Brzozowski. Ania Szczepańska followed in the footsteps of this film and the entire event with her film Unearthed, which she worked on for 14 years. Her documentary follows the author’s search for the circumstances surrounding the making of the film, and the significance of the excavations themselves. The history of Polish short documentary films, often screened in cinemas as supporting films, intertwines with the history of archiving related to the history of concentration camps in Poland. The director also films herself and her crew discussing more general topics related to the perception of recent history, and its impact on the present, which is currently shaken by many new military conflicts.  “I began my investigation not knowing that this 14-minute film would occupy me for 14 years, that it would change how I view Poland, that it would change me, period.”

Ten years ago, Volodymyr Zelensky was just one of the many faces on Ukrainian television screens. He became a star thanks to the 2015 satirical series Servant of the People, in which he played a history teacher who becomes president. Four years later, what began as fiction became a reality. This French documentary follows the transformation of a popular TV comedian into a statesman on the front lines of the Russian invasion. Archival footage, family photos, television appearances, and interviews with Zelensky and those closest to him create a multi-layered portrait of a man who always longed for a large audience. At the same time, the film places his personal development in the broader context of post-Soviet Ukraine, which is also searching for its own identity. “It is the portrait of a man who becomes president and leader of a country at war, even though nothing in his life had prepared him for it. It is the portrait of a man, but also, implicitly, of his generation and of a country—Ukraine.” — Lisa Vapné