Ukrainian intelligence services have intercepted thousands of the phone calls which Russian soldiers made from the battlefield in Ukraine to their families and friends in Russia, painting a stark picture of the cruelty of war in a dizzying emotional tension. Juxtaposed with images of the destruction caused by the invasion and the day-to-day life of the Ukrainian people who resist and rebuild, the voices of the Russian soldiers — which range from being filled with heroic illusions to complete disappointment and loss of reason, from looting to committing more horrible war crimes, from propaganda to doubt and disillusionment — expose the whole scope of the dehumanising power of war, and the imperialist nature of the Russian aggression.
Content warning: depiction of war
Oksana Karpovych is a Ukrainian-Canadian filmmaker, writer and photographer born in Kyiv. She lives and works between Kyiv and Montreal. Her first feature documentary Don't Worry, the Doors Will Open won the New Visions Award at RIDM in 2019 and received a special mention at Hot Docs 2020.
In her personal projects, Karpovych explores the everyday life and oral histories of ordinary people and how state politics intrude into the private sphere, influencing the communities she intimately documents. Karpovych is a Cultural Studies graduate of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine and a Film Production graduate of Concordia University in Montreal.
