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Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova’s doc Russians at War makes its North American debut in Toronto this week, following a world premiere in Venice, amid calls from Ukrainian diplomats in Canada for the festival to pull the film.

The two-hour work, for which Trofimova embedded with Russian soldiers serving in Ukraine over a period of seven months, gives never before seen insight into their lives on the frontline.

But the empathetic gaze on these men and women as Russia continues to wage war in Ukraine – in a military campaign that has caused at least 35,000 civilian casualties, including 11,520 deaths; flattened cities, towns and villages, and displaced 16 million people – has provoked outrage in some quarters.

Comments on Deadline to an article on the film out of the Venice press conference, have likened Trofimova to German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who was branded a Nazi propagandist for her films Triumph of the Will and Olympia,...