The film “Russians at War” is planned to be shown at a film festival in Switzerland

A frame from the movie “Russians at War”

Swiss Film Festival Zurich Film Festival decided to show a scandalous film by Russian director Anastasia Trofimova “Russians at War”. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine expressed protest and indignation at such a decision.

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“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine strongly condemns any attempt to provide Russia with a cultural stage to whitewash its war crimes, while Russian forces continue to commit atrocities against Ukrainians“, the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published on Facebook.

The ambassador of Ukraine in Switzerland also commented on the upcoming show Iryna Venediktova: “Any aggression must be stopped immediately and decisively. Punished. Only this can be a prevention of possible other aggression. Aggressors cannot be movie heroes when they violently invade a neighbor with the aim of killing and occupying. The invaders committed a crime. Crime of aggression“

20th film festival in Zurich (Zurich Film Festival) will be held on October 3-13.

Currently, Trofimova’s film is not in the list of festival films on the festival’s official website. As reported by 20 Minutenthe show was previously scheduled for October 11. Now this information has disappeared from the site.

Today, September 19, the organizers ZFF should announce the full program of the festival. So, maybe the movie “Russians at War” will be announced there.

Journalists managed to schedule the showing of Trofimova’s film

Screenshot from the festival website

In addition, the program includes a film “Intrusion” director Serhii Loznytsiawho was expelled from the Ukrainian Film Academy in March 2022 due to the fact that his films were included in the program of the Russian film festival “From Lviv to the Urals”. This film about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, from a director living in Lithuania, was also screened at Cannes.

Among the films selected by the festival for its program is also the winner of the 77th Cannes Film Festival – a film by Sean Baker “Anora”which tells about the romance between a stripper and the son of a Russian oligarch. The two main male characters are played by Russian actors – Yuriy Borisov and Mark Eidelstein. Russians can also be seen among the supporting characters.

About the film “Russians at War”

“Russians at War” – a documentary by the Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova.

Trofimova was born in Moscow. She worked in the media for more than 10 years and participated in various documentary projects in Canada, the Balkans, the Middle East and Russia. Created a number of documentaries for the Russian propaganda media Russia Today.

The film “Russians at War” tells about how Trofimova spends seven months together with the Russian military in the occupied part of Ukraine. It does not show the destruction and deaths caused by the Russians to Ukrainians, but depicts the Russian occupiers as ordinary people.

One of the soldiers in the film denies the accusation that the Russians are committing war crimes in Ukraine. And Trofimova herself says that while she was creating the tape, she had not seen anything like it.

The world premiere of Trofimova’s film took place at the Venice Film Festival.

Before the screening of the film at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Ukrainian community in Canada organized a number of protest actions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Consul General of Ukraine in Canada Oleg Nikolenko, etc. joined the calls not to show “Russians at War”.

In the end, the organizers of TIFF said that they would not show Trofimova’s film, allegedly for security reasons. However, after the official closing of the film festival, two separate screenings of the film were announced on Tuesday, September 17.

A few days ago, director Anastasia Trofimova was included in the list of persons who threaten the national security of Ukraine.

Read also: Why the propaganda film about “good boys” got into the program of the most prestigious film festivals