Everybody is wrong about TIFF film

Early in "Russians at War," a new film by the Russian-Canadian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova, a soldier named Vitaly explains to his comrades why they're being followed by a woman with a camera.

- JUSTIN LING

"It's about us," Vitaly says. "Not like on TV, but the truth." All the while, Kremlin propaganda plays on the TV behind them. Later, flipping through a “patriotic" military newspaper, Vitaly laments the "dangerous" pull of this propaganda. He continues reading every page.

These scenes, captured by Trofimova over seven months embedded with Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, speak volumes. "Russians at War" is a film that purports to break through the propaganda of Moscow's brutal war, but instead it wallows in it.

Critics, including those who protested the film's scheduled appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival, have called "Russians at War" shameless pro-Russian propaganda and demanded, with some success, that it be censored. Some columnists who have seen the film say it is a fundamentally anti-war work of art which humanizes those who we are used to vilifying. After watching the film and speaking to Trofimova, I'm here to tell you that the truth lies in between: It is not propaganda, but it is informed by it. It is anti-war, but not pro-peace.