A stimulating panel debate with Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa after the screening of his latest feature Donbass. Loznitsa’s fourth feature (he has also made many celebrated documentaries) provides an equally grotesque and macabre picture of life in the Ukrainian war zone. Criminal gangs, the local army and Russian troops fight each other in the streets. There is fear and suspicion everywhere, but what is real and what is fake news?
With actors and real inhabitants of the region, Loznitsa recreated with ink-black humour short films that are circulating on YouTube and other social media, in order to show yet again that truth is often more miraculous than fiction. It brought him the prize for the Best Director in the Cannes programme Un Certain Regard. After the film, Absaline Hehakaya (head of cinema at De Balie) will talk to Loznitsa and the audience about themes such as national and cultural identity and what films and filmmakers can mean for political reality in Russia and Ukraine.
