Sergei Loznitsa - Official Website (2024)

DONBASS / 2018

SYNOPSIS

In the Donbass, a region of Eastern Ukraine, a hybrid war takes place, involving an open armed conflict alongside killings and robberies on a mass scale perpetrated by separatist gangs.In the Donbass, war is called peace, propaganda is uttered as truth and hatred is declared to be love.A journey through the Donbass unfolds as a chain of curious adventures, where the grotesque and drama are as intertwined as life and death.This is not a tale of one region, one country or one political system. It is about a world, lost in post-truth and fake identities. It is about each and every one of us.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

original title

ДОНБАСС [DONBASS]

english title

DONBASS

genre

feature

country

Germany, Ukraine, France, Netherlands, Romania

year

2018

language

Ukrainian, Russian

subtitle

English

color

CREW

written & directed

Sergei Loznitsa

director(s) of photography

Oleg Mutu R.S.C.

production designer

Kirill Shuvalov

costume designer

Dorota Roqueplo

sound

Vladimir Golovnitski

editing

Danielius Kokanauskis

co-producer(s)

Dennis Ivanov, Jacques Bidou, Cristian Nicolescu, Marc van Warmerdam, Peter Warnier

producer(s)

Heino Deckert

co-production

ARTHOUSE TRAFFIC (Ukraine), JBA PRODUCTION (France), GRANIET FILM (Netherlands), WILD AT ART (Netherlands), DIGITAL CUBE (Romania)

production

MA.JA.DA. Fiction

CAST

Tamara Yatsenko

Liudmila Smorodina

Olesya Zhurakovskaya

Boris Kamorzin

Sergei Russkin

Petro Panchuk

Irina Plesnyaeva

Zhanna Lubgane

Vadim Dobuvsky

Alexander Zamurayev

Gerogy Deliev

Valeriu Andriuta

Konstantin Itunin

Valery Antoniuk

Nina Antonova

Natalia Buzko

Sergei Kolesov

Svetlana Kolesova

Sergei Smeyan

"Donbass": Cannes Reviewby Jonathan Romney, 2018-05-09, www.screendaily.com Even by the standards of his caustic debut fiction feature My Joy (2010) or last year’s descent-into-hell drama A Gentle Creature, Donbass comes across as savage stuff. A sprawling black comedy with a vast ensemble cast, it evokes a chaotic state of social breakdown in the Donbass region of Ukraine, often with virtuoso brilliance, but it’s sometimes over-stretched vignettes can easily tax the overwhelmed viewer. "Donbass": Film Review | Cannes 2018by Leslie Felperin, 2018-05-09, www.hollywoodreporter.com Tackling a bloody struggle that these days barely registers in the media beyond the region itself, despite the fact that the shady Ukrainian connections to President Donald Trump and his cronies keep bobbing up in the news, the film feels timely and borne of deep-held despair at the senseless strife tearing the country apart. Donbass first look: both too much and too little about the war in Ukraineby James Lattimer , 2018-05-10, www.bfi.org.uk Yet the fascination exerted by these interstitial moments is largely a reflection of the misjudged nature of many of the episodes, which often either fail to make an impression or outstay their welcome, or even do both at the same time. The wearyingly shouty, over-extended wedding scene, for example, says at once too much and too little about the system that now governs the Donbass. Cannes 2018. Correspondences #3: Weed in Colombia, War in Ukraineby Daniel Kasman, 2018-05-11, www.mubi.com A film at once electric and morose, Donbassserves as a guide to the malignant darkness shrouding over the eastern part of the Ukraine: fiction filmmaking with combative intent and a powerful sense of necessity. Cannes 2018 Dispatch #2: Donbass, Petraby Blake Williams , 2018-05-11, www.filmmakermagazine.com The experience is veritably nightmarish—an unforgiving wallow in images of humanity at its worst—and if I have any hesitation in declaring this, after a single viewing, to be a great, even monumental achievement, it’s generated by my uneasiness regarding Loznitsa’s decision to obfuscate many of his episodes’ political specificity. DonbassCannes 2018 Reviewby Giovanni Marchini Camia, 2018-05-19, www.thefilmstage.com In strict terms of craft, Donbass is an impressive achievement, but its heavy-handedness nevertheless feels inordinate. Since Loznitsa doesn’t provide almost any historical and political context, it’s unlikely that anyone without prior knowledge of the war in Donbass will come out with much actual insight into what’s going on there. Cold Wars: The 2018 Cannes Film Festivalby Daniel Fairfax, 2018-06-27, www.sensesofcinema.com Loznitsa’s procedure becomes heavy-handed and contemptuous. . . . This tendentiousness becomes flagrant in the film’s implausible final scene, which pushes the contrast between his understated form and the dubious nature of his content to unhinged extremes. You don’t have to be a Putin booster to feel that, with Donbass, a great filmmaker has discredited himself. Festivals: Drifting Apartby Kent Jones, 2018-07-03, www.filmcomment.com Unlike last year’s A Gentle Creature, whose pursuit of the random and the lethargic resulted in a film that felt almost unattended, Donbass is piercing and impressively relentless, and its best scenes possess a believably banal and terrifying momentum. Donbass - Contemporary World CinemaBy Richard Porton, 2018-08-31, www.cinema-scope.com Donbass’ near-Buñuelian episodic structure (in interviews, Loznitza cites The Phantom of Liberty as an influence) acquires a cumulative power. "Reality" as Embattled Story: Donbass in Odesa and Their Own Republic at Doclisboaby Carmen Gray, 2018-12-20, www.sensesofcinema.com In perhaps the most harrowing scene of all, unbearable in its gradual mood shift and escalation, a man is tied to a pole with a sign announcing him to passersby as a pro-Ukrainian mercenary killer. Its intricate weave of interaction is a lesson not only in how mobs function, but how traumatic experiences and attitudes passed down through generations move virally and boil up again with little need of prodding. First Look 2019: Donbass and The Trialby Daniel Witkin, 2019-01-11, www.reverseshot.org Donbass is the film in which Loznitsaʼs work as both fiction and documentary filmmaker come into closest harmony. Comprised of largely disconnected, almost sketch-like fragments (the director has cited Buñuelʼs Phantom of Liberty as an influence), the film has a pronounced ripped- from-the-headlines quality, even as it casts doubt on the veracity of the headlines themselves. Sergei Loznitsaʼs Donbass: A Chimera of Warby Nataliya Shpylova, 2019-10-17, www.blogs.iu.edu With Donbass, we initiate a conversation about how the military conflict inEastern Ukraine develops and what contributes to the escalation of political and diplomatic tension between Russia and Ukraine. «Донбасс»: банальность зла изло банальностиГеоргий Касьянов, 2019-02-06, www.kyivdaily.com.ua Известные мненемногочисленные рецензии и отзывы людей, профессиональноразбирающихся в искусстве кино, достаточно четко разделились надве группы. Одни – в восторге от «настоящего кино». Другие – вужасе от «ненастоящего кино».

festivals & awards

Cannes Film Festival - Un Certain Regard - Opening FilmPrize For Best Director
Reykjavik Film FestivalAward For Creative Excellence In Cinema
Art Film Fest Košice in Slovakia
Filmfest München
Karlovy Vary Film Festival
Odessa Film Festival
Garage museum of contemporary art in Moscow – Special Screening
Jerusalem Film festival – Masters Section
Summer Film School in Czech Republic
Melbourne Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival
BIAFF (Batumi International Art-house Film Festival) - Competition
Helsinki Film Festival
CPH PIX
New World Views
Bergen International Film Festival
Split Film Festival
Busan International Film Festival - World Cinema
Cape Town Film Festival
62nd BFI London Film Festival
Warsaw Film Festival
Bosphorus Film Festival in Istanbul
29th Ljubljana International Film Festival
Stockholm International Film Festival - Competition
Sevilla European Film Festival - Competition
Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival
Black Nights Film Festival
Cairo International Film FestivalBest Director - The Silver Pyramid