‘Novorossiya’ Offers Rare Perspective From the Russian Side of War in Eastern Ukraine
variety.comLise Pedersen “Novorossiya” by Enrico Parenti and Luca Gennari, which had its world premiere this week at CPH:DOX, is a rare film that shows the ongoing conflict in Ukraine’s Eastern Donbas region from the Russian perspective.Gennari, an experienced cinematographer, was shocked at the way the war in the Luhansk and Donetsk region, where pro-Russian separatists have proclaimed the state of Novorossiya (literally “New Russia”), no longer received any media attention once the Maidan revolution was over.In 2017, he decided to head to the Donbas region with his camera to see what life was like there.The film follows the parallel stories of a handful of characters, ranging from a communist U.S.
fighter from Texas to a young Ukrainian soldier, a captain in the separatist army who dreams of rebuilding the Soviet Union, an opera singer from the Donetsk opera house, two young men from a heavy metal band and two elderly women who live in a bunker.
Gennari had planned to return to Donbas but when the pandemic hit, this became impossible. It did, however, give them time to edit the film: it took them a year.The goal, says Parenti, who edited some 80 hours of footage into the 64 minute doc, was to develop a narrative that would offer a fly-on-the-wall take of the situation there.“We wanted to observe the reality there, to show each character as a human being, with their own thoughts, their own beliefs, their own propaganda, their own lives.
It’s clear that the foreign fighters are very extreme in the way they talk – our goal was not to offer an exaggerated perspective but to show it the way it is,” he says.In masterfully edited scenes, the film features an overlay of day-to-day life scenes with the ever-present sound of war. “We.
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