film review: Russians at War

 

Directed by Anastasia Trofimova

Written by  Anastasia Trofimova & Roland Schlimme

ChinoKino review: A

Reviewed by Allan Tong

 

First of all, Russians at War is an anti-war documentary, not propaganda.  

For 129 minutes, this film depicts a squad of Russian front line soldiers and medics who are demoralized by their country's war against Ukraine. The soldiers, ranging from their early-twenties into their fifties, see no point to the fighting, are given few or no orders when entering battle, drink constantly, and distrust Russian state media and their leaders. Some just want to collect a paycheque. Others want to go home. 

Malaise overhangs the film. One soldier complains that he and his comrades are being sent into battle with no information like "blind kittens." Another points to the old U.S.S.R. hammer-and-sickle insignia in his tank. (This means the tank was manufactured over 33 years ago.) Yet another points to a Russian newspaper and TV broadcast and urges the camera not to believe either. A 50-year-old soldier risks prison by leaving the front line to see his wife and children in Moscow. A widow stands over the grave of her loved one and openly questions the war.

 

In one scene, Russian soldiers are packed into a truck heading somewhere into battle, and a few are chugging from an open bottle. It recalls news footage from 1968 when U.S. soldiers smoked pot as they combed the jungles of Vietnam. Both groups of soldiers didn't know what they were fighting for. The difference is that U.S. networks broadcast their soldiers' sentiments every night which soured American opinion and helped end that unjust war. The Russian war lacks this uncensored footage. Russians at War offers a rare glimpse of the Russian front lines as they are, which makes this film essential viewing.

These are the facts: Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and continues to ravage that country in an unjust war. Secondly, the word "war" is uttered many times in this film, which is a punishable offence  in Putin's Russia. For this reason alone, there's no way Russians at War can screen in the country where its subjects live. To call this documentary propaganda is to be deaf and blind.

Director Anastasia Trofimova was reporting for the CBC when Russian invaded Ukraine. Benefiting from the chaos at the front and the endemic confusion that paralyzes the Russian army, she embedded herself with a squad. During her Q&A after the second screening at the TIFF Lightbox last Tuesday, Trofimova explained that she hid in the woods whenever commanding officers inspected, and when she was caught they chewed her out. She never obtained official press credentials in her seven months of shooting and, as the footage shows, risked her life to capture it.

The documentary is shown largely in a fly-on-the-wall, verite style. The director inserts a voice-over here and there purely to add context. At times, she questions a soldier. She asks one whether he believes Russian soldiers are committing atrocities. He denies it. This same young soldier is gung-ho about killing Nazis in Ukraine. It's clear to the audience that he has swallowed Vladimir Putin's brainwashing. Another soldier turns militant after seeing footage of a wounded comrade begging for a drone not to kill him, but it shoots him anyway. Does this scene engender sympathy for the dead Russian soldier? Yes. Does either scene compel me to cheer Russia and vilify Ukraine? No.

"Hundreds of instances over verbal abuse" including threats of violence and sexual abuse against TIFF staff forced the festival to postpone screenings. Those were originally scheduled to take place at a 14-screen multiplex at the height of the fest, TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey explained at a somber introduction before the Tuesday screenings. These took place at the TIFF Lightbox, a building far easier to secure. Indeed, there were many police and security guards on hand, stretching from the sidewalk on King Street where an angry protest raged, to the stage of cinema 2. In an unprecedented move, Russians at War was shown as the last screening of the venerable festival, two days after it ended.

How did we we come to this?

film review: Eternal Spring

 

Directed by Jason Loftus

Review by Allan Tong

ChinoKino score: A

You've seen or heard of the Falun Gong, those folks who stand still on street corners with their hands raised and eyes closed as they meditate. This stunning animated doc explains who they are and why they are cruelly persecuted by China's government.

Acclaimed comic book artist Daxiong (Star Wars, Superman, Justice League of America) practised Falun Gong in the Chinese town of Changchun which gave birth to him and this spiritual movement numbering in the millions. In 1999, China's authoritarian government became alarmed with FG's popularity and started jailing and torturing practitioners as well as burning their books. However, Daxiong didn't flee China until something happened in March 2002.

What happened was a small band of FG practitioners climbed some telephone pulls, literally cut a live news broadcast and patched their own video. That video showed the Chinese public that Falun Gong is not evil as the state-owned news kept saying, but is healthy and harmless. Sadly, the police hunted down the rebels. Many were tortured, some recanted and others died.

Eternal Spring (English for Changchun) startles the viewer from the opening frame, portraying China c.2002 in startling immediacy through lifelike animation. The images just grab you. The film cuts back and forth between contemporary interviews on camera of Daxiong, now living in Toronto, and surviving members of the rebel group who now reside in South Korea and the New York City area. To hear them tell their stories is moving. To see them portrayed in 2002 via animation executing the hijacking is nerve-wracking. To witness their imprisonment, also animated, is harrowing. Shining through this horror are the memories, defiance and hope of Daxiong.

Eternal Spring will screen theatrically starting September 23 in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Check local listings for details.

film review: Zappa

 

Directed by Alex Winter

ChinoKino score: A-

Review by Allan Tong

How to sum up the career of the one of music's most provocative, ornery, diverse and contrary talents in two hours? Alex Winter does a good job capturing one of music's most iconoclastic figures in this new documentary, simply called Zappa. No, Zappa isn't complete. The doc goes easy on Frank's notorious arrogance, and unfortunately leaves much of his early family life--and the forces that shaped his headstrong personality--vague. However, Winter does paint a complex, exciting portrait of a unique talent who still attracts a fervant cult of fans. As Alice Cooper says in the film about FZ, "He had the freaks and the artsy people. Then, he had the whole middle that didn't get it."

I'm no Zappa freak, but I do respect his stature in modern music. It's best to approach this film with an open mind or to know nothing about the man at all. Zappa freaks will probably know a lot of the information disclosed here, like Zappa drumming in an interracial band in the late-1950s when segregation still gripped the United States, or his obscenity bust a few years later (likely a set-up) for making an "obscene" recording when he ran a recording studio.