Intercepted

Oksana Karpovych / Canada, France, Ukraine / 2024 / Czech Premiere / 95 min.

synopsis

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022, Ukrainian security forces have intercepted and published thousands of phone calls from Russian soldiers on the frontline. The men's calls to their mothers, wives and siblings testify to the power of propaganda and misinformation, as well as disillusionment, war crimes and trauma. Oksana Karpovych puts the world that is heard in constant tension with the world that is seen. Sound and image are at war with each other but united by the theme of death. The somnambulistic landscape is reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic computer game. Observational shots of dead houses, streets and towns in which the shadows of life move are accompanied by the voices of people who, although standing on the other side of the front, are now probably dead too.

“While many of these intercepted comments were so absurd, they helped me see the reality, with wild justifications for the invasion. The calls were constantly keeping me in this state of cognitive dissonance, and that’s exactly what I tried to recreate in the film.”

Quote source: POV Magazine

The screening is organized in cooperation with the European Parliament Office. The film Intercepted is nominated for the LUX Audience Award of the European Parliament. You can vote for the film HERE.

biography

Oksana Karpovych is a Ukrainian-Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and photographer. She was born in Kiev, where she studied cultural studies, and lives in Montreal, where she studied film production at Concordia University. She made her debut with the documentary portrait of Ukraine from the train Don't Worry, the Doors Will Open (2019). While working on her second feature film, she was caught up in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where she spent the first six months broadcasting war reports to the world.

more about film

director:	Oksana Karpovych
producer:	Rocío Barba Fuentes, Giacomo Nudi, Pauline Tran Van Lieu, Lucie Rego, Darya Bassel, Olga Beskhmelnytsina
script:	Oksana Karpovych
photography:	Christopher Nunn
editing:	Charlotte Tourrès
sound:	Alex Lane