The Toronto International Film Festival announced in a press release on Thursday, September 12, “pause” screenings of the controversial documentary Russians at War after receiving “significant threats”.
“We have been made aware of significant threats to festival operations and public safety.”the organizers said in the text, referring to information “indicating potential activity in the coming days that poses a significant risk”. “This is an unprecedented decision” for the festival, they added. “We are committed to showing it when it is safe to do so.”
Canadian-Russian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova presented Russians at War at the Venice Film Festival in early September, after spending several months with a Russian battalion on the Ukrainian front, gleaning the testimonies of soldiers from which she drew this film of more than two hours. It was to have its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on Friday. Screenings were then scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.
“An anti-war documentary”
In Venice as in Toronto, Ukrainian political and cultural figures expressed their anger, denouncing the “Russian propaganda”. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, earlier this week deplored the screening of the film, saying:“There could be no moral equivalence in this war”.
The Ukrainian State Agency for Cinematography has also asked the Toronto Film Festival not to screen the film, which it calls“dangerous tool for manipulating public opinion”. Anastasia Trofimova said in a statement that her film was, on the contrary, “an anti-war documentary” and that he showed “ordinary people”.
“In response to the recent attacks on my film Russians at War and against my person, I would like to reaffirm that this French-Canadian co-production is an anti-war documentary, and that great risks had to be taken to make it.”she explains. “The suggestion that this is Russian-orchestrated propaganda is absurd, given that I am facing criminal prosecution in Russia. I unequivocally condemn the Russian military’s invasion of Ukraine and recognize the legitimacy of the investigations launched by the International Criminal Court into crimes committed in Ukraine. I also understand the pain and anger that this subject can trigger in those who have suffered from war. My mother emigrated from Russia to Canada so that we could live in a country that values freedom of expression and human rights. I hope that my film can be seen, appreciated or challenged for its own sake, and not on the basis of mere assumptions, and that the kind of debate it helps to foster can help bring about peace.”
Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers At the Berlinale, the war in Ukraine seen through the voices of Russian soldiers
Add to your selections
According to a journalist from Agence France-Presse who saw the film, the soldiers seen on screen seem to have lost the meaning of their participation in this conflict. Lacking equipment, they tinker with their own weapons, using equipment dating from the Soviet era. Chaining cigarettes and glasses of alcohol, they try to drown their dismay in the face of the injuries or deaths of their comrades.
In an email to Monde received on September 7, the French press agency and production company Capa, co-producer of the film, reaffirms that it is in no way « pro-Russian » more “only shows the destitution and the state of mind of the basic soldiers on the Russian side”. She specifies that, if Anastasia Trofimova has “certainly worked for [la chaîne russe] RT », this happened “a few years ago, and on foreign shoots (notably in the Middle East), the channel being at the time the only one in Russia able to finance distant missions”.
Producer Sean Farnell told X that the decision to cancel the Toronto screenings shocked him “broken the heart”He blamed criticism from senior officials for having “incited the violent hatred that led to the painful decision to pause the presentation of Russians at War. »
