Urgent, newsworthy documentaries about Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine have become film festival fixtures and awards season staples over the past two years, but Intercepted shows there is room for formal innovation and even hopeful, defiant beauty in this grim subject matter. Ukrainian director Oksana Karpovych’s second feature uses a simple but inspired format, pairing mostly static still-life shots of domestic life in her war-ravaged homeland with anonymous audio clips of intercepted phone signals from Russian soldiers calling back home, some complaining about grim conditions on the frontline, others carelessly sharing incriminating evidence of brutal war crimes. This Berlinale world premiere is a real-life horror movie on some level, but with the dark and violent events happening off screen, almost like a low-key stylistic cousin of Jonathan Glazer’s harrowing Auschwitz bio-drama The Zone of Interest (2023)
Karpovych is based in Montreal, but returned to her native Ukraine just weeks before Putin’s invasion in February 2022, with plans to work on another project. Strong hints of the imminent conflict already hung heavy in the air, and the war became Karpovych’s main focus after Russian tanks crossed the border. She began assembling audio material that was freely available on the official YouTube channels of the Ukrainian security service, pairing these clips with coolly observed video vignettes of everyday life in war-ravaged Ukraine. Intercepted is by turns sickening, visually striking and strangely life-affirming in its depiction of an entire nation’s resilience against Putin’s bloodthirsty imperialist thuggery. Further festival bookings are likely after Berlin, while adventurous buyers should take an interest in a work that could just as easily screen in an art gallery as a cinema.
Intercepted shows us melancholy vistas of shattered apartments, ransacked houses, abandoned classrooms, bomb-cratered roads, the wreckage of a burned-out aircraft, makeshift mass graves, and more. Sparing use of sombre, ambient music underscores this gloomy mood. But we also also see children playing in the street, teenagers skateboarding beneath sturdy concrete monuments, cattle serenely moving across sunny farmland, friends and families stoically enjoying their lives. The Ukrainian flag is a recurring motif, a small but heartening symbol of survival. Karpovych cites Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985), Chantal Akerman’s Sud (1999) and Ognjen Glavonic’s Depth Two (2016) as influences, all films which calmly survey landscapes haunted by murderous horror. There are also echoes here of artfully poised, contemplative documentarians like James Benning and Nikolaus Geyrhalter.
By contrast, the accompanying Russian audio clips are ragged and abrasive, full of fear and aggression, all spiked with racist and homophobic slurs towards Ukrainians. Putin’s absurd “Nazi” claim is tossed around casually, with bitter irony, given how closely the dehumanising insults used by the invaders echo the genocidal language of actual wartime Nazi propaganda. Many invaders boast about perpetrating casual murder, torture and sexual assault on Ukrainians, military and civilians, women and children alike. “We were given the order to kill everyone we see,” one reports. Reaction from partners and loved ones back home is often brutally blasé: “beat them into kebabs, barbecue them all.”
But behind all this heartless macho bloodlust, some soldiers express doubt, cynicism and even agonising guilt about their actions. One young conscript warns his family back home that Kremlin conspiracy theories about NATO bases in Ukraine are “fucking bullshit, don’t believe what they show you there.” Another protests about the wholesale slaughter of his comrades, with battlefield deaths reported as heart attacks so the government can shirk compensation payments. Many curse military commanders and lying politicians for sending them to their deaths alongside convicts and mercenaries, who have orders to shoot anyone retreating. The quality of consumer goods in Ukraine is another recurring theme, and looting civilian homes commonplace. “A Russian wouldn’t be a Russian if they didn’t steal something”, one proud mother cackles.
Some may dismiss Intercepted as propaganda, but such both-sides equivocation is a bourgeois indulgence for those of us lucky enough not to live next door to a mass-murdering dictator. While Karpovych’s message is emphatically pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia, there is enough objective reportage from the conflict now for even the most critical thinker to conclude there is only one aggressor in this ongoing tragedy, and only one side committing large-scale war crimes. While the damage suffered by Ukraine is horrific, the lingering wounds Russia has inflicted on itself can not be discounted. As one fatalistic soldier tells his wife, shortly before he is sent into a battle he is unlikely to survive, “make sure our son doesn’t join the army.”
Director, screenwriter: Oksana Karpovych
Cinematography: Christopher Nunn
Editing: Charlotte Tourres
Music: NFNR
Sound design: Alex Lane
Producers: Giacomo Nudi, Rocío B. Fuentes
Production companies: Les films Cosmos (Canada), Moon Man (Ukraine)
World sales: Lightdox, France
Venue: Berlinale (Forum)
In Russian, Ukrainian
95 minutes
