Donbass (2018)

Directed by: Sergei Loznitsa | 121 minutes | drama | Actors: Valeriu Andriuta, Natalya Buzko, Evgeny Chistyakov, Georgiy Deliev, Vadim Dubovsky, Konstantin Itunin, Boris Kamorzin, Sergey Kolesov, Svetlana Kolesova, Thorsten Merten, Irina Plesnyayeva, Sergey Russkin, Oleksandr,skaya

It will be no fun living in an occupied country. It will also be no fun to live in a country where lies, deceit and corruption rule the day-to-day business. How hard is it to live in a thoroughly corrupt country that is also occupied? The answer to that question can be found in the Ukrainian episode-drama ‘Donbass’. A dark film about a region on the brink of civilization.

Donbass is a region in eastern Ukraine where fighting has been going on since 2014 between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army. In the film, a drama in docu-style, we see in separate episodes what this struggle does to ordinary (and slightly less ordinary) citizens. We see how propaganda takes the place of reality, how corrupt alpha males enrich themselves from the chaos and how the threat of violence is always felt.

For example, the film starts with a couple of actors who have to play in a fake news item, we later see how a German journalist is harassed by a separatist army unit, how an arrested ‘traitor of the people’ becomes the victim of a people’s court and how a man who has stolen his car wants to pick up from the police ends up in a Kafkaesque hell. It is always the separatists who seem to be on the wrong side of morality here. With an emphasis on corpses.

The latter is the main problem of this elusive film. The situation in ‘Donbass’ is so complex that it is not always clear to an uninformed viewer what is happening. For example, there is a scene in a hospital (something with stocked pantries) that can only be partially interpreted by the viewer. Also an elongated wedding scene and a piece about a group of religious supplicants are not entirely clear. That way we never know for sure whether we are watching a realistic drama, a satire or a combination of the two.

That’s too bad, because ‘Donbass’ is for the most part fascinating viewing. Sometimes surreal, often threatening, occasionally black-comic. In addition to the atmospheric images, there is also an eye for detail. The latter suggests that the makers knew exactly what they were doing, and it’s a shame that you never quite understand what they really want with this rather dismal film.