war

The film takes place on the eighth day of Russia's war campaign in Ukraine. Eight Ukrainians residing in the Czech Republic – a businesswoman, cleaning ladies, construction workers, and bus drivers – make their own diary-like observations of the events in their homeland. They continue to bury themselves in their work, unable to afford to withdraw themselves from their current lives. In their minds, however, they've transported themselves hundreds of kilometers away, helping their fellow countrymen and women by any means necessary. They provide accommodation for refugees, scout for bulletproof vests, and call their loved ones who’ve taken shelter from falling bombs. They have a hectic and emotionally overwhelming 24 hours ahead of them. But it’s not the first 24 hours and it won’t be the last.“Through the personal stories of real Ukrainian people, the film brings intimate insight into the many facets of war.” — Oksana Moiseniuk---Source: https://www.dokrevue.cz/clanky/osmy-den-valky

“Are you proud of yourself?” This was a question asked in 2020 by a father of one of female voluntary workers who had just come back from a rescue mission searching for drowning refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. Instead of a reply, an open letter came to life, followed by a film illustration of the feelings of ugliness and hopelessness, composed of sea waves mingling with various film footage.“In July 2020, a young volunteer returning on the humanitarian aid ship Sea Watch 3 writes to her father. The text of this letter is put into perspective through different registers of travel images (animation, Super 8, archives…).”---Source: https://www.shortfilmwire.com/en/film/200110598/En-col_re

A few years ago, Argentine novelist Félix Bruzzone bought a house near the sprawling Campo de Mayo military base near Buenos Aires. It was not a random choice: his mother was kidnapped and held there during the military junta’s rule in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The aim of the writer’s self-therapeutic mission is also to uncover the other dark secrets of the location. The idyllic countryside provides a stark contrast to the atrocities committed by the Argentine government, as recounted by local witnesses. From their accounts, Bruzzone composes a picture of a place that contributed significantly to the disruption of his family and the nation.„The film is like a poem in the sense that it is not a movie that dwells on meticulous detail. It unfolds gradually, using symbolism to find ways, if one can, to overcome the grief. It is not direct like a history book.“ — Jonathan Perel---Source: https://www.latinolife.co.uk/articles/camuflaje-camouflage-2022-jonathan-perel

“I had many friends before the war; many of them are dead now”, one of the narrators comments, looking at a photo of her classmates. “We had a perfect life, but we were never satisfied,” she adds laconically. The secondary school in Mostar united them, the War of Independence divided them. This mosaic of memories of the early 1990s is composed of contemporary postcards and silent shots of places where wars were once fought. Their calmness today contrasts with the emotional excerpts from the letters of the Croatian students. They describe their flight across the border, their experiences in refugee camps, and their lingering hatred of the enemies who robbed them of their home and youth.“They took everything from me, everything I had. They drove me from my home, robbed me, imprisoned my father, destroyed my city and everything I loved about it.”  

František Fajtl and Filip Jánský were among the few Czechoslovak airmen who actively fought on all major European battlefronts during World War II and lived to tell the tale. This unique documentary edit, which combines authentic eyewitness accounts of historic events with little-known archival footage, examines various fates and places as well as the journeys associated with them. The resulting amalgam of images, speeches, and music/sound files is far from your typical historical illustration. A suggestive portrayal of life under bleak conditions, far away from home and on the cusp of death, unfolds before our very eyes.“The moment I saw these two Czechoslovak airmen flash onscreen at the National Film Archive in a series of raw footage shot by director Jiří Weiss, I found that this wartime footage had an interesting way of tying in with the books written about both airmen.”---Source: https://protisedi.cz/trailer-good-old-czechs/

The film opens with Travis Wilkerson's childhood memories shaped by the Cold War and his mother's obsession with the atomic bomb. Having lived in constant fear of a nuclear holocaust, he would often be haunted by nightmares. After Donald Trump's electoral victory, the nightmares came back. In an effort to understand the root cause of his neuroses, the filmmaker embarks on a therapeutic road trip across the United States. He’s joined by his daughters and his wife, who is also the co-creator of this documentary. Together, they visit missile launch facilities known as “nuclear silos” and other places linked to the annihilation of indigenous peoples. Their family trip becomes the underlying basis for the pervasive criticism of a national ideology that’s founded on mass destruction and raising fears.“The film is a story of our land — even though it never belonged to us personally —, our family, but also of all the violence against the indigenous people, without which we wouldn't be living there today.” — Erin Wilkerson---Source: https://www.melodieundrhythmus.com/mr-2-2022/strahlende-zukunft/

Switzerland is one of the few European countries that still has mandatory military service. This film provides a glimpse behind the walls of the barracks, where soldiers participate in the required drills and exercises, but also find ways in which to alleviate boredom. We watch young recruits during daily activities: eating, cleaning, and video conversations with the surrounding world. However, the montage also includes the vlogs of men who have already completed their military training and share their experiences, anecdotes, and frustrations over the internet. In this way, the problematic aspects of a militarized society appear in between entertaining excerpts from military life.“The people who shared the room with me would wail / yo, I don’t want to always hear hip hop first thing in the morning / I said, I don’t care, I have to destroy these bad feelings from the military.”---Source: Rap by a soldier from the film Over Our Hills (28:40-28:56)  

The directing duo meets and talks to veterans of the Portuguese colonial war to record their memories, experiences, and feelings. But it’s not just about the storytelling – it’s about meeting and sharing them. The interviews are interspersed with archival footage, suggesting that the film is not just a nostalgic spectacle, but a reflection on war and the price of peace in general.“There is a continuum, we are aware that, looking at history, peace is almost a utopia, and we took those images for one thing because it was the war that went on over the years and which seems to haunt us, which is very old and visceral.” — Marta Ramos---Source: https://comunidadeculturaearte.com/entrevista-jose-oliveira-e-marta-ramos-para-fazer-um-filme-tem-de-haver-um-compromisso-com-alguma-realidade/

The Islamic State is usually presented as an elusive, disembodied evil, materializing only during terrorist attacks. Director Zaynê Akyol decided to look the vague threat in the face and give it a concrete form. She gained unique access to dozens of detained jihadists from around the world, interviewing their wives as well. Instead of the interrogations they’re used to, she lets them talk freely about their childhoods, their faith, their dreams and experiences, and the history of the feared organization. She juxtaposes their chilling vision of a worldwide caliphate—which they refuse to give up even after the fall of ISIS—with aerial footage of Syria, decimated by fanatics like them who put ideology above human life.“It was a very emotional film for me to make. That is why I went to meet the Other, this enemy of the world, to listen and try to understand him. Of course, such a tête-à-tête would never have been possible were it not for the pretext of filmmaking.”---Source: https://womenandhollywood.com/hot-docs-2022-women-directors-meet-zayne-akyol-rojek/

Director Nataša Urban left her native Serbia many years ago. But now, through her father’s travel diary and conversations with family and loved ones, she returns to the places where she grew up and which have since become ravaged mementos of the war in former Yugoslavia. Human and concrete remains are all that are left in the villages where the author used to walk with her parents. The overwhelming history of the Balkan peninsula is eating away at the smaller, family ones – happy memories of childhood are overpowered by what has been dredged up from the uncovered mass graves. Looking at the bloody images of Yugoslav history is as painful as looking directly at a solar eclipse.“Then, in order to cover it up, they destroyed the POW camp in 1992, one year after they set it up. And people would come to pick the bricks from a nearby village, on tractors to take the bricks to use them to build a church in that nearby village.”

Even after more than 25 years since the dreadful war crimes had been taking place in former Yugoslavia, this tragic history is far from over – be it for the victims’ families, conflicting nations or for a Czech investigator who comes back to the region to carry on in his work after so many years. The documentary return voyage follows not only the paths of fleeing war criminals, but is driven by an effort to capture a part of the ethic mission of the then newly formed International Criminal Court in The Hague along, in its double nature: based on an independent investigation of war crimes, to strive for reconciliation in cases of multifarious ethnic, national and other conflicts.“The International Criminal Court has successfully condemned only a small part of war criminals in former Yugoslavia – one hundred of the conflict’s major perpetrators carrying either military or political responsibility. Naturally, these solved cases definitely retain a symbolic meaning.”---Source: https://www.denik.cz/ze_sveta/jugoslavie-valka-chorvatsko-20210815.html  

Even after more than 25 years since the dreadful war crimes had been taking place in former Yugoslavia, this tragic history is far from over – be it for the victims’ families, conflicting nations or for a Czech investigator who comes back to the region to carry on in his work after so many years. The documentary return voyage follows not only the paths of fleeing war criminals, but is driven by an effort to capture a part of the ethic mission of the then newly formed International Criminal Court in The Hague along, in its double nature: based on an independent investigation of war crimes, to strive for reconciliation in cases of multifarious ethnic, national and other conflicts.“The International Criminal Court has successfully condemned only a small part of war criminals in former Yugoslavia – one hundred of the conflict’s major perpetrators carrying either military or political responsibility. Naturally, these solved cases definitely retain a symbolic meaning.”---Source: https://www.denik.cz/ze_sveta/jugoslavie-valka-chorvatsko-20210815.html

In January 1946 in Kyiv, under the banner of the Soviet Union, Nazi generals, officers, and their collaborators were tried for war crimes. The film reconstructs the trial using unique archival footage from the courtroom. In chilling testimonies from witnesses and survivors of concentration camps and the Babyn Yar massacre, the horrific crimes against humanity that took place during the war come to life, contrasting with the Nazi defendants’ cold-blooded descriptions of events.“If we do not talk about the traumas and tragedies that occurred, they come back to haunt us.” (Sergei Loznitsa)---Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2022/04/sergei-loznitsa-donbass-interview-russia/629509/

In this documentary film inspired by Winfried Georg Sebald’s book of essays of the same name, Sergei Loznitsa addresses whether it’s ethical to use civilians as targets for achieving one’s warfare aims and whether their use as a means of mass destruction can at all be morally justified. The montage of archival footage depicts German cities being bombed out by Allied air raids during World War II and offers a horrific testimony to the destruction and its cataclysmic consequences that have in many circles remained a taboo topic.“If we look at my current film, it looks at a principle that has become acceptable, almost standard, since the Second World War. Targeting the civilian population is now practically a rule of war strategy. At the moment, this principle is on display in Ukraine, but before, the same thing was happening in Syria, and the world seemed to just look on disinterested. I think this idea, this principle, of mass destruction needs to be analyzed and reflected upon, not just by the politicians, but by philosophers, by anthropologists, by sociologists, by all those who study human society.” — Sergei Loznitsa---Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ukrainian-director-sergei-loznitsa-history-destruction-cannes-2022-1235151641/

For thirty years now, a dilapidated house has been providing essential asylum to war refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh. Three generations, including the children and grandchildren of people made to leave their homes, struggle to scratch an existence on the outskirts of Baku. They are faced with common problems: loss of home, outrooting, sadness and illnesses. “Since the end of the second war, I have often dreamed of our own home.”