The American Sundance Film Festival screened last week two documentaries by Ukrainian filmmakers about the Russian invasion of their country and the insidious effects of Kremlin propaganda.
20 Days In Mariupol which premiered on Friday night, January 20, describes with images taken by journalists the arrival of the conflict in a city where one of the bloodiest battles was fought last year from the war.
the filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov, a journalist who filmed the advance of Russian troops in the port city in February and March 2021, told AFP that he hoped that the publication of his images in a documentary would “impact more deeply” and in a more “hard” way the viewers than the short informative videos.
The documentary shows the way Chernov risked his life to film a Russian attack about a motherhood that outraged the world. He also recounts the attempts of the filmmaker and his team to flee the city to transmit the images at a time when Russian officials claimed that it was a set-up performed by Ukrainian actors.
Russian disinformation is also a central theme of iron butterflies, which premiered on Sunday the 24th. The documentary tells the story of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, shot down in 2014 by separatists from eastern Ukraine, portending a future full-scale conflict.
It was named for the shrapnel ammunition from the Russian-made BUK missiles that struck the plane. line linking Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing 298 people.
Iron butterflies uses media videos and others taken from social media, as well as excerpts from intercepted communicationsto show how the Russians went from claiming that separatists had shot down a Ukrainian plane, to claiming that kyiv was responsible for the deaths of civilians.
A third film, fictional this time, called Klondikewill be screened again at Sundance after having won the award for world achievement in the 2022 edition of the independent festival that takes place every year in Park City, in the mountains of Utah (western United States).
The film tells the story of a family living on the Russian-Ukrainian border when conflict erupts in 2015.
Source: Eluniverso
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