Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister, expressed “grave concerns” about the documentary screened by the Toronto International Film Festival.
By Amanda Coletta and Jada Yuan
September 18, 2024
TORONTO — The plan, Anastasia Trofimova says, was to shine a light on an underreported aspect of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The Canadian Russian director says she spent seven months embedded with a Russian battalion, without the permission of the country’s defense officials, to produce her documentary.
“Russians at War” chronicles the life of disorganized and disillusioned Russian soldiers, many of whom have been drafted into service or have signed up for the money, the conflict’s purpose growing more elusive each passing day.
In its short life, the joint Canadian French production has drawn opprobrium and protests from Kyiv to Ottawa. Supporters say it’s an antiwar film that captures an element of conflict that hasn’t been much covered: the views, fears and sacrifices of its instigators.
Opponents say it’s Kremlin propaganda.
The documentary has drawn controversy since it premiered this month at the Venice Film Festival. Andriy Yermak, the former producer who runs Ukraine’s presidential office, called its inclusion “disgraceful.” Kyiv this week added Trofimova to its list of national security threats.
But the criticism intensified ahead of screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival, drawing in Canada’s deputy prime minister and Ukrainian diplomats. Canada is home to the largest population of Ukrainians outside Ukraine and Russia.
One of the film’s funders withdrew support. Amid “significant threats” to festival operations and safety, organizers made the “unprecedented” move to suspend screenings.
Opponents say the film “whitewashes” the crimes of Russian aggressors, fails to challenge their false claims and omits the Ukrainian perspective. They warn that it risks weakening Western support for Ukraine. Some question whether it should exist at all.
“It’s not the time to evoke sympathy for Russian soldiers because they continue to occupy us, fire missiles at populated areas and the director won’t show this in her film,” Ukrainian filmmaker Olha Zhurba said in a Facebook post.
Supporters say it’s less “Triumph of the Will,” the 1935 Nazi propaganda documentary, than “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the antiwar epic that showed the horrors of World War I through the eyes of young German soldiers. Pulling the film from festivals, they say, would be a form of censorship and could set a dangerous precedent.
“Pretty much the entire discussion has been framed so far by people who have not seen” it, Trofimova told The Washington Post. (Trofimova worked as a Russian-language interpreter for The Post during reporting for an article published in July, before “Russians at War” was released.
After suspending screenings last week, organizers showed the film Tuesday, two days after the awards were handed out and the festival officially closed.
Cameron Bailey, the festival’s chief executive, said staff were targeted in hundreds of incidents of verbal abuse, which included threats of sexual violence. At the screening Tuesday, he defended the decision to include it in the program and to finally screen it.
“I believe that surrendering to pressure from some members of the public or from a government when it comes to presenting any cultural product can become a corrosive force in our society,” Bailey said.
The documentary team didn’t set out to make a film about Russian soldiers. Oscar-nominated producer Cornelia Principe approached Trofimova at the start of the conflict to suggest a film about antiwar protests in Russia.
But the plan changed when Trofimova had a chance encounter on a train with a man in a Santa suit named Ilya. He was a Ukrainian from eastern Ukraine fighting for Russia. She wanted to know more.
“On the one hand, I had the Russian media who are saying that these are these faceless heroes who never bleed,” Trofimova said. “And then most of the reports in the Western media are talking about all these awful war crimes. And it’s just a question I had to answer for myself.” She asked to embed with Ilya’s support battalion.
The film’s opponents say it’s inconceivable that Trofimova could have embedded with the battalion without the permission or knowledge of Russia’s Defense Ministry. She says she sought approval from the unit’s commanders. None granted it, she said, but none turned her away.
When Trofimova arrives in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, the battalion is in disarray. Only 300 of its 900 members are left, and “half are crippled,” one says. They’re awaiting the arrival of 300 new conscripts.
They’re armed with Soviet-era weaponry that they do not know how to operate. A new arrival, carrying only a knife and a flashlight, is killed in battle. One soldiers says he hasn’t been paid. Another takes shrapnel to the lips after a comrade fails to attach a grenade to a drone properly.
Some of the troops say they’re motivated by patriotism. Others were lured by money. One says he joined because he feared he would slip back into drug addiction. Several say they don’t know what they’re fighting for.
Many become disillusioned. They dismiss pro-Moscow media as “propaganda” and “lies.” They complain that they are being sent to the front like “blind kittens.”
“They say the only way back to Russia is feet first,” one soldier says. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have come. Because I, too, had life plans.”
Principe, the producer, said she doubted Russian authorities would be “happy” about a documentary that “doesn’t make the Russian army look very good.”
But some of the criticism is aimed less at what’s in the film than what’s not.
One soldier — nom de guerre: “Cartoon” — tells Trofimova that he must vanquish “Nazis” in Ukraine. The characterization goes unchallenged.
When she asks him about reports that Russians are committing war crimes, he dismisses them: “Why would they?” There’s no mention that a U.N. commission and other bodies have concluded that Russian soldiers have committed war crimes.
Principe said the scene shows that the soldier “has been isolated from the reality of what’s going on.” The words are his, she said, not the film’s.
Trofimova, who quit a sister channel of Russian state media outlet RT in 2020, said she began receiving threats when it was announced that the film would premiere in Venice. But the support she received there, she said, was overwhelming. So many people approached her in tears, she said, that she began to avoid the festival grounds.
That was not the case in Canada.
The documentary was funded in part by the public broadcasters of Ontario and British Columbia. Ontario’s TVO accessed support through the Canada Media Fund, a nonprofit funded in part by the federal government.
TVO initially defended the documentary, calling it “an antiwar film” made at “at great personal risk to the filmmaker.” But four days later, TVO’s board chair said the broadcaster would “no longer be supporting or airing” it.
Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister, said she shared the “grave concerns” of Ukrainian diplomats and diaspora groups. Freeland, a former foreign minister, has Ukrainian heritage.
“We as a country have to be very, very clear that there can be no moral equivalency in our understanding of this conflict,” she told reporters last week. “... It’s not right for Canadian public money to be supporting the screening and production of a film like this.”
Trofimova, who studied in Canada, called Freeland’s comments “shocking.”
“That was the first time, definitely in my memory, that a Canadian elected official has overstepped her mandate and pretty much demanded to censor the work of a Canadian artist,” she said.
Outside the screening Tuesday, several dozen demonstrators chanted “Shame on Canada!” and “Russians lie, Ukrainians die!”
Iryna Melnykova bought two tickets to each of the two screenings Tuesday. Not because she intended to go, the Ukrainian Canadian said, but to prevent others from seeing it. She hasn’t seen it, she said; the trailer was enough.
“I don’t want to listen to any stories, any explanations, any justifications” from Russians, she said. “They are war criminals.”
Susan Oppenheim decided to see the film after politicians began criticizing it. She said it was far from Russian propaganda.
“I think it was clear that the group of soldiers that she embedded with were teenagers,” she told The Post. “They knew nothing. They have no idea what’s going on, and they did say more than once, ‘Don’t watch Russian television.’”
David L. Stern, Serhiy Morgunov and Serhii Korolchuk in Kyiv contributed to this report.
By Amanda ColettaAmanda Coletta is a Toronto-based correspondent who covers Canada and the Caribbean for The Washington Post. She previously worked in London, first at the Economist and then the Wall Street Journal.follow on X @a_coletta
By Jada YuanJada Yuan is a writer for The Washington Post's Style section focusing on culture and entertainment, after several years covering national politics and two very different First Ladies. She spent 2018 circumnavigating the globe as the first 52 Places Traveler for The New York Times, and was a longtime culture writer for New York magazine. follow on X @jadabird
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