Russian Soldiers Documentary Triggers Uproar at Film Festival

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) said Wednesday that it would not cancel screenings of a film about Russian soldiers in Ukraine, panned by some as Russian propaganda. But a day later brought an "unprecedented" change. The film festival, which wraps up Sunday, has done exactly what it said it wouldn't, though not as a way to appease protesters who've shown up at theaters in Toronto. Organizers said they made the "heartbreaking" decision due to serious threats to public safety, reports the New York Times. High-profile people had come out against Russians at War—from Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova, who spent seven months embedded with Russian troops in eastern Ukraine—as it made its North American debut.

Ukrainian Consul General Oleh Nikolenko said the film was an attempt to white-wash war crimes, per Reuters. Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who is of Ukrainian descent, said, "It's not right for Canadian public money to be supporting the screening and production of a film like this." Russians at War, which received $250,000 in funding through the nonprofit Canadian Media Fund, may humanize Russian soldiers, who "speak directly to the camera about fear, death and hope as the war rages around them," per Reuters. But it is not propaganda, according to Trofimova. Indeed, it's "an antiwar film" created without permission from the Russian government, which leaves Trofimova at risk of criminal prosecution in Russia, she says.

The film reportedly came out of Trofimova's chance meeting with a soldier heading to war. But some critics question how the filmmaker could've spent so many months embedded with Russian soldiers without government permission. They also see bias in her past work for Russian state-backed media company RT, implicated in a large-scale influencing operation in the US. But Trofimova says she believes "unequivocally" that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is "unjustified" and "illegal" and acknowledges "the validity of the International Criminal Court investigation of war crimes in Ukraine." TIFF producers said the decision to cancel screenings was forced after false claims about the film, a trailer for which shows soldiers questioning whether they're doing the right thing. (More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)