Donbass

This film was sponsored and financed by various organizations in the Ukraine and European countries, so one expects (and gets) a generally uncomplimentary picture of the people of the breakaway Donbass region of Ukraine. However, the picture is not one-sided; for instance, we are shown people living in crowded, unsanitary cellars to escape the constant, unpredictable Ukrainian shelling of Donbass cities and towns, with no military objectives and plenty of civilian casualties.

The question is: what is real and what is staged or reenacted? Some sequences (such as the wedding) may have been shot from reality, perhaps with some rehearsal, but others are clearly staged, such as that where a prisoner Ukrainian soldier is abused and insulted by a crowd. The framing of the shots is careful and deliberate, and the prisoner, as many other characters in the movie is played by a professional actor. Finally, one episode is clearly trying to depict the banditry and brutality of the Donbass militia, so one could hardly expect the militants to appear voluntarily in front of the camera in an unfavorable light.

Perhaps the key to the film is given by Ukrainian director Sergey Loztnitsa in the first episode, where a crew of actors is seen staging and playing a bombing incident for the camera (the same crew is attacked in the end but we are never sure if the violence is real or staged). Perhaps Loznitsa is trying to warn the viewer to take the proceedings with a grain of salt. The Donbass is referred to in the movie as "separatist" and as an "occupied territory" of the Ukraine. The first is correct but the second arguable: no occupiers are in sight. All in all an incomplete but fascinating view of the Donbass and its people in the period preceding the present war, although watchers should exercise their critical sense.

This movie is a sequence of barely connected vignettes about life in Russian-occupied east of Ukraine, and just how horrific and grotesque it is to live there at the moment. It captures all of the details flawlessly - it sometimes is shot for shot live-action version of existing videos on Youtube, but with real actors. Donbass is depressing as hell but so is the existence in that region, so it is well deserving of many awards that this movie received.

A mix of Kusturica and Fellini, describing the East Ukraine in dark, cold, ironic, cruel, carnaval - like colors. A film about cynismus, propaganda, manipulation, terror, nationalism, cruelty and apparences but, more important, about people as victima of whole situation. Maybe, a manifesto.

The political events of recent weeks have brought to the attention of the whole world a geographical area whose existence most of us ignored or had very vague notions about - eastern Ukraine with the separatist regions that have proclaimed themselves recently independent republics. Those who want to know details about this conflict, which already has a violent history of eight years, can watch 'Donbass', the 2018 film by Ukrainian director Sergey Loznitsa, filmed by Oleg Mutu. I mention from the beginning the name of the cinematography director, the one who created the visual atmosphere of some of the best films of Cristian Mungiu and Cristi Puiu, because already after a few minutes of viewing I made the association with 'Memories from the Golden Age' of Mungiu . The confirmation that I had not made a mistake eventually came with the credits. But the stakes here are much higher, because unlike the Romanian director who casts an angry and sarcastic look at a recent but still past history, Sergey Loznitsa was dealing with a current tragedy in 'Donbass', and maybe, premonitory, with the future of a conflict that these days threatens to blow up the peace of Europe and the world.

Making a film about a violent conflict while this happens is no easy task. One of the most difficult obstacles is to prevent the film from becoming primarily a propaganda vehicle for one side or the other, and I will put aside the question of the historical or contemporary rightfulness of the causes of the conflicting parties. From start, Sergey Loznitsa leaves no doubt as to the side of the conflict in which he finds himself, using the official Ukrainian names of the regions in which the action takes place. There is a symmetry in the sequences that open and close the film, which have as characters a film propaganda team whose mission is to stage attacks with alleged victims on the separatists side. Death, however, is always present. The victims are real and the participants in the staging are not spared either. The constant coexistence with danger, bombings and explosions, degradation of life conditions and war damage are unknown to most people in Europe. 'Dombass' brings them to our attention and reminds us that this is a region of the continent, even if on its periphery today. In hindsight, the exposition seems prophetic, perhaps not to those who pay attention to the lessons of history, but Loznitsa's attention is directed to the people, to yesterday's neighbors now separated by history, propaganda, conflicts fueled by fake news, corruption and violence.

The filming style is a mix of pseudo-documentary with absurd comedy, and the boundaries are not always clear. As in a news diary or as in life, there is no clear line of action, some characters return, but each of the ten or so episodes could be a stand-alone report or short film. Some of them are pseudo-documentaries, inspired by real events and situations but filmed in the style of news sequences, with hand-held camera, long takes, live sound caption. A few other episodes are working, at least roughly, according to some script, but it is clear that the actors have been allowed to improvise and live their roles. The vision of the degradation of human relations in times of conflict is pessimistic and desolate. The absurd seems to dominate scenes such as the wedding or the one in which a businessman who came to recover his stolen car is blackmailed to donate it 'for the anti-fascist fight', to find out that he is just one of many in the same situation. The inspiration of Kusturica's and Mungiu's films is obvious. Other scenes have a more tragic tone - that of the bus with refugees returning to the separatist areas or that of the Ukrainian prisoner in danger of being lynched by the crowd intoxicated by propaganda. In both kinds of sequences, the distance between what we see on the screen and reality fades. The cold, the fog, the fear, the violence, the absurdity experienced by the people on screen envelop us. Now, four years after filming, it's the end of winter in Ukraine again. What we saw in 'Dombass' we see in the news and seems to become a reality that envelops us all.

Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival 2019. If this movie wanted to showcase chaos and lawlessness in a warzone annex newly born country, they did it very well. On the other hand, we did not get a chance to feel involved with the local people as we hardly know enough about the circumstances and the differences that kept those people apart. The division in loosely coupled chapters did not help either. There is nothing to bind the chapters together, merely leading to several (and now for something completely different) sketches. All of them interesting in their own way, but we are left to our own devices to arrive at a common morale or a message.

We often heard the word "fascist" used, more as a general word to denote something negative, rather than having to do with the real meaning of fascism (just like the word "communist" in the Mccarthyism era in the USA was used for everything beyond the norm). I got the impression that the soldiers at the road blocks also did not know exactly what was going on and in which battle(s) they were involved. Similarly, the man tied to a lantern pole and exposed to the whims of the public, was also often accused of being one of the fascists over there, leaving us to assume that the people "over there" also used some label for the opposite side. As a side note, the German journalist held up at one of the road blocks was indirectly labelled as a fascist, because he may not be a fascist himself, but his father and grandfather surely had been one (I quote).

The movie consists of a series of separate chapters, on very different locations and in even more different settings, among which a road block and a wedding. Only the first and last chapter were connected by showing the same persons and location, having their make up ready in preparation of a "real live" scene. The ending of the second instance was a bit unexpected, however, but fitted very well in the "fake news" theme of the movie. We hear, for instance, a witness who saw a mass killing from her balcony, give her "testimony" two times in front of a camera crew, seemingly spontaneous including tears and being unable to speak further. We know better while watching how the scene was created twice (a second take was needed for a wider shot, but the "spontaneous" elements were identical).

All in all, the movie kept me at a distance and did not involve me. Even worse, I saw the well-known problems of former Sovjet-countries also manifest here, like corruption, unability to depend on the law, and self-serving civil servants. (Is this a pun? It sounds like one but not intended.)

The emphasis on fake news as the central theme of this movie, escaped me. But I see it in any synopsis or review, so I may have missed something important. Or was it intended to suggest a contemporary theme, something we should be concerned about?? I've read somewhere that the stories we see were all based on previous "fake news" clips on social media. In hindsight, this may explain the assortment of loosely coupled "sketches" without a common central theme.