In a few weeks, the students of the ECAL/HEAD Master of Cinema should have gone to Ukraine for a three-week workshop, hosted by the community of young Ukrainian directors. History, which some are trying to rewrite by force, decided otherwise. If the Ukrainian people resist with determination to the Russian aggression, it is particularly important to support the efforts of filmmakers who, on the ground, try to film the reality of the war.

As such, an evening of support for the Ukrainian population and in particular for its filmmakers is organized by the Cinema Department of HEAD - Geneva and les Cinémas du Grütli on Wednesday, March 2 at 8:45 pm. The screening of the film Donbass directed by Sergei Loznitsa (director’s prize Section Un certain regard at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival) will be followed by a discussion that will bring together the audience, filmmakers teaching at the HEAD Cinema Department as well as the Ukrainian filmmaker-editor based in Switzerland Mykyta Kryvosheiev.

Proceeds from the screening will go to the group Babylon’13, an informal association of Ukrainian documentary filmmakers born during the Maidan revolution in 2014 that launched a Support filmmakers at war fundraiser aimed at supporting documentary filmmakers on the ground in war.

Consisting of thirteen episodes shot in 2017-2018, Donbass links situations that mix tragedy and grotesquerie, detailing the exactions perpetrated by pro-Russian separatists (looting, propaganda, disinformation) who clash - in a hybrid war - with the Ukrainian army supported by volunteers. These sketches denounce the arbitrariness of a society progressively destroyed by violence, gangrenous by corruption. In this fresco with no way out, Serguei Loznitza stages to the point of absurdity a disaster that sees occupiers and occupied, government and local mafias, victims and executioners confront each other relentlessly. The trail of this progressive disintegration leads, without detours, to February 2022…

Text by Olivier Zuchuat (Prof. HES associated with the Department of Cinema of HEAD - Geneva)