There have been impressive films about the war in Ukraine, such as from director Sergei Loznitsa (guest of the festival in 2023), but perhaps the best documentary of 2024 in my opinion was Oksana Karpovych’s singularly personal film Intercepted. It’s an apparently unique depiction of the Ukrainian war, as it’s compiled of recorded phone calls made from the front by Russian soldiers to their families, juxtaposed with images of Ukrainian landscapes. It’s chilling to hear the soldiers’ relatives spewing Putin’s indoctrinated nazi and NATO propaganda, while the soldiers’ responses range from macho hubris to despair and realistic accounts of suffering. One caller’s ”final” wish is not to let his own child join the army. Equally stirring are depictions of Russian prisoners of war (their identities concealed) spending their time eating and resting.
The film doesn’t depict actual warfare at all, which makes the film even more poignant, although there are images of the conflict’s aftereffects, such as abandoned and destroyed homes. The sorrow evoked by the loss of peace and thousands of lives makes us wonder what the world could be like without the utter pointlessness of war.
Timo Malmi