Zürcher Nachrichten - War in all its horrors looms large over Venice festival

EUR -
AED 4.102936
AFN 77.459209
ALL 99.457975
AMD 432.778937
ANG 2.014982
AOA 1037.198836
ARS 1075.462107
AUD 1.637702
AWG 2.010723
AZN 1.896412
BAM 1.957567
BBD 2.257397
BDT 133.610576
BGN 1.967095
BHD 0.420956
BIF 3240.766592
BMD 1.117068
BND 1.443677
BOB 7.725834
BRL 6.060991
BSD 1.118089
BTN 93.516982
BWP 14.711012
BYN 3.658936
BYR 21894.534621
BZD 2.253583
CAD 1.51451
CDF 3207.102402
CHF 0.945106
CLF 0.037685
CLP 1039.834343
CNY 7.868957
CNH 7.865561
COP 4652.867874
CRC 579.176012
CUC 1.117068
CUP 29.602304
CVE 110.361631
CZK 25.09773
DJF 199.096109
DKK 7.459401
DOP 67.11516
DZD 147.697258
EGP 54.203943
ERN 16.756021
ETB 128.672268
FJD 2.455148
FKP 0.850713
GBP 0.838751
GEL 3.049838
GGP 0.850713
GHS 17.609655
GIP 0.850713
GMD 76.520298
GNF 9660.63171
GTQ 8.642567
GYD 233.866865
HKD 8.701854
HNL 27.734781
HRK 7.594958
HTG 147.340329
HUF 394.325395
IDR 16862.310423
ILS 4.193842
IMP 0.850713
INR 93.28429
IQD 1464.608618
IRR 47020.184922
ISK 152.323096
JEP 0.850713
JMD 175.656948
JOD 0.791665
JPY 158.837019
KES 144.22468
KGS 94.14088
KHR 4537.973401
KMF 493.018125
KPW 1005.36065
KRW 1485.761989
KWD 0.340516
KYD 0.931732
KZT 535.488455
LAK 24688.058616
LBP 100120.360598
LKR 340.334086
LRD 223.60779
LSL 19.480105
LTL 3.298412
LVL 0.675704
LYD 5.325711
MAD 10.842591
MDL 19.510432
MGA 5037.455838
MKD 61.670102
MMK 3628.193592
MNT 3795.79733
MOP 8.97552
MRU 44.25794
MUR 51.251405
MVR 17.158436
MWK 1938.706188
MXN 21.561716
MYR 4.671621
MZN 71.324681
NAD 19.480105
NGN 1831.914005
NIO 41.146764
NOK 11.711141
NPR 149.618968
NZD 1.787354
OMR 0.430023
PAB 1.118089
PEN 4.197394
PGK 4.438966
PHP 61.937515
PKR 310.954552
PLN 4.274947
PYG 8727.720029
QAR 4.076069
RON 4.974525
RSD 117.085522
RUB 103.440971
RWF 1505.731882
SAR 4.191907
SBD 9.279414
SCR 14.899487
SDG 671.918347
SEK 11.341279
SGD 1.439918
SHP 0.850713
SLE 25.521993
SLL 23424.35363
SOS 638.970916
SRD 33.347817
STD 23121.054172
SVC 9.782741
SYP 2806.667024
SZL 19.465218
THB 36.952903
TJS 11.884819
TMT 3.909738
TND 3.386365
TOP 2.61629
TRY 38.074039
TTD 7.59979
TWD 35.674679
TZS 3042.560594
UAH 46.331582
UGX 4151.672326
USD 1.117068
UYU 45.930216
UZS 14243.726675
VEF 4046637.851088
VES 41.058342
VND 27412.851
VUV 132.620568
WST 3.124956
XAF 656.537735
XAG 0.035844
XAU 0.00043
XCD 3.018932
XDR 0.828633
XOF 656.537735
XPF 119.331742
YER 279.630082
ZAR 19.542269
ZMK 10054.950521
ZMW 29.096607
ZWL 359.69547
  • RBGPF

    60.5000

    60.5

    +100%

  • RELX

    0.7600

    48.13

    +1.58%

  • CMSC

    0.0650

    25.12

    +0.26%

  • GSK

    -0.8100

    41.62

    -1.95%

  • SCS

    -0.8000

    13.31

    -6.01%

  • RIO

    2.2700

    65.18

    +3.48%

  • AZN

    0.3200

    78.9

    +0.41%

  • BTI

    -0.3100

    37.57

    -0.83%

  • RYCEF

    -0.0200

    6.93

    -0.29%

  • NGG

    -1.2200

    68.83

    -1.77%

  • CMSD

    0.0300

    25.01

    +0.12%

  • VOD

    -0.1700

    10.06

    -1.69%

  • BCC

    7.6300

    144.69

    +5.27%

  • BCE

    -0.4200

    35.19

    -1.19%

  • BP

    0.3300

    32.76

    +1.01%

  • JRI

    -0.0400

    13.4

    -0.3%

War in all its horrors looms large over Venice festival
War in all its horrors looms large over Venice festival / Photo: Alberto PIZZOLI - AFP

War in all its horrors looms large over Venice festival

The roots of war, its harrowing realities and aftermath are explored in a host of offerings at the Venice Film Festival this year, including a remarkable documentary going behind the lines with Russian soldiers.

Text size:

Gaza and Ukraine, the two World Wars, and a Benito Mussolini biopic series figure among the subjects of documentaries and features, in what festival director Alberto Barbera has called "an expressive, artistic and also political force".

Barbera told AFP he hoped the war films did not become "hostage to ideological prejudices and polemical claims that are useless".

Among the most topical are two documentaries on the Ukraine war, seen from starkly opposing points of view.

For "Russians at War", Russian-Canadian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova embedded with a Russian battalion in Ukraine's east, while "Songs of Slow Burning Earth" is a "visual diary" of the war's effect on ordinary Ukrainians, according to Ukrainian filmmaker Olga Zhurba.

The young Russian soldiers in Trofimova's film struggle to understand why they are fighting. Sent into the Lugansk region, their battalion has been decimated, with only 300 soldiers remaining out of 900.

"It's so confusing here, I don't even know what we're fighting for," says one soldier, a sentiment shared by many comrades.

Another puts it more bluntly: "While the politicians work out who has the biggest balls, there will be many victims."

At a press conference, Trofimova said the soldiers she lived with for seven months were "absolutely ordinary guys" who belied the notion in the West that all Russian soldiers are war criminals.

"I think in the Western media that's what Russian soldiers are associated with at this point, because there were no other stories. This is another story and this was the reality they lived," she said.

"Russian soldiers are not someone whose voices are heard."

Zhurba's film portrays the war's effect on civilians, from desperate telephone calls made to emergency services about nightime bombings to mothers identifying their slain sons.

Zhurba told journalists she deliberately chose not to show battles or bodies in her film.

She said that keeping "the horrors of war" out of the frame "is more powerful because it evokes your imagination as a viewer".

- Roots of war -

A more cerebral study of conflict comes from the prolific Israeli auteur Amos Gitai in the film "Why War", inspired by an exchange of letters between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.

Even though the film contains no images of war, it has nevertheless sparked controversy, as has Dani Rosenberg's feature "Of Dogs and Men", in which a teenage girl returns to her kibbutz after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack in search of her dog.

Around 300 film professionals signed an open letter last week protesting both films' inclusion at the festival, accusing their production companies of being "complicit in whitewashing Israel's oppression against Palestinians".

At a press conference, Gitai noted that none of the signatories had seen his film.

He criticised both sides in the conflict, saying that one-sided, slanted depictions of the war on both Israeli and Palestinian television were fuelling it.

"The iconography has prolonged the war," Gitai said. "So we decided to make an anti-war film without images of war."

Another documentary, "Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989", from Sweden's Goran Hugo Olsson, taps three decades of Swedish public broadcasting archives to show over time how "one country's media perceived one of the world's longest conflicts".

- No bombs or battles -

The two World Wars feature in two out of the four Italian films in the main competition, whose top Golden Lion prize will be awarded Saturday.

"In Campo di Battaglia" by Gianni Amelio, injured soldiers are arriving daily at a military hospital in Italy's northeast, where doctors patch them up to return them to the front.

A military doctor, played by Alessandro Borghi ("Suburra: Blood on Rome"), chooses to save lives by deliberately maiming them to prevent their return to war, bringing him into conflict with his by-the-book colleague and friend.

In "Vermiglio", from Maura Delpero, we see the effects of war on an isolated mountain village at the end of World War Two after a fleeing soldier arrives with a secret.

It is "a war story without bombs, or big battles", whose effect is no less powerful, Delpero said.

Yet to premiere is "M: Son of the Century" by "Atonement" director Joe Wright, an eight-part Italian-language series on Mussolini's rise to power that Wright has said will recall modern-day populists.

O.Meier--NZN