Sometimes fiction begins where reporting ends.
Show the massacres, the pure hatred from within, at the heart of the militias.
"Donbass", released in 2018, noticed at the Cannes Film Festival, is one of those disturbing works that help if not to understand, at least to feel the dread of a country at war.
Sergei Loznitsa, a 57-year-old Ukrainian filmmaker, who also directed the documentary "Maidan", signed with "Donbass" a work of fiction to go further.
He who, in recent days, has declared himself in no way surprised by the total war launched by Putin in his country, recounts in this film the genesis of it, through the conflict in Donbass, a Ukrainian zone largely populated by Russian speakers that Russia has invaded in 2014.
Drawing inspiration from real events, the filmmaker shows very precisely the dress rehearsal of what is happening today: how to distinguish the enemy from the friend within such close peoples, whose language differs mainly by pronunciation?
How not to tear each other apart within the same family?
A mother chooses to live in misery, with her values, in a precariousness that her daughter calls "homelessness", she who has chosen to work for the separatist Republic, New Russia, in the service of a president appointed by the power of Putin.
"If you're not a Nazi, your grandfather was"
Appalling scenes of farce, when a wedding brings together militiamen, and an assistant to the mayor of the New Republic implements the new rules, including legal ones.
To annex is to destroy people, but also a heritage, laws, registers, archives.
It is to wipe the slate clean of the past.
In hate.
"Donbass" helps to understand that Putin has been constantly using the word "denazify" Ukraine for years.
The film plunges into the heart of checkpoints, Ukrainians as well as Russian separatists.
Among the latter, “fascists”, “rubbish”, “Nazis” are everyday insults to characterize the neighbor who has become an enemy because he wanted his independence.
A German journalist is even taken to task: “If you are not a Nazi, your grandfather was.
It feels like a bad cartoon movie.
Sometimes criticized when it was released in 2018 for its excesses and its grotesque appearance, today, everything it describes has happened on a national scale.
Bombs that fall from who knows where, and target anything.
The endless wait at checkpoints.
Residents recruited for false reports where they explain how good it is to live in an annexed region, under the Russian yoke.
Paying extras and manipulating television news, Putin's daily life.
Read also“Ukrainian Nazis”, fake news, demonization of the West … we watched Russian television
Everything that seems exaggeratedly heavy in "Donbass" only reflects an atrocious banality widely documented today.
Until the account is settled.
Death brings death.
The longer the war lasts, the more hatred grows.
The more the embryos of revenge bud.
This is Putin's wager: win or half lose, but destroy the hope of peace and a quiet life on the other side of "his" border.
“I ask you not to sink into madness”
“Donbass” appeared in 2018 as a low-intensity film about a regional conflict that hardly concerned us, a tiny piece of territory reduced to confetti of ashes by the Russian army.
Go (re) see it at MK2 Beaubourg, in Paris (IIIe), or on myCanal.
The channel also offers it in replay.
It's not wasted time.
It doesn't boost morale.
It opens your eyes to the total dehumanization of the other, prior to thefts, bombs and executions.
On March 1, Sergei Loznitsa published a text to defend Russian filmmakers, "many friends and colleagues, who have risen up against this senseless war".
“When I hear today, he wrote, calls to ban Russian films, these are the people who come to mind, they are good people, worthy people.
They are just as much the victims of this aggression as we are.
What is unfolding before our eyes right now is terrible, but I ask you not to go mad.
Don't judge people on their passport.
They can only be judged by their actions.
A passport is due only to the chance of birth, whereas an act is what the human being accomplishes himself.
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"Donbass"
, by Sergei Loznitsa, 2018, 1h50, available on myCanal.