Ukrainian Filmmakers Renew Call for Boycott of Russian Films

variety.com:

Lise Pedersen Ukrainian filmmakers and producers discussed the act of resisting war through images during an online talk Thursday at international documentary film festival Visions du Réel.The panel was made up of producer Illia Gladshtein and director Nadia Parfan, whose film “Heat Singers” screened at the festival in 2019, Maksim Nakonechnyi, whose debut film “Butterfly Vision” will be in the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes next month, and photographer and director Artem Iurchenko (“Cursed Days,” 2018).Nakonechnyi has been shooting in Ukraine since the first days of the war and Parfan returned from an artist’s residence in Egypt in the wake of the Russian invasion to document what was happening in her country.

Iurchenko, who is based in Paris, has been traveling across Europe in his car since the start of the war, transporting refugees, equipment, medical and humanitarian aid to and from Ukraine.

A monumental print of his photograph of a Ukrainian child refugee was unfurled on the main square of Lviv by French artist JR in mid-March in a tribute to the children affected by war.

Much of the online debate centered on what panel members describe as Russia’s post-colonial narrative. “This is a war of censors, a very illustrative post-truth war where the enemy’s side has its own truth which it has been making up for a long time,” said Nakonechnyi. “It’s not just a war of weapons but of narratives and ideas.