Swiss festival censors film amid Ukrainian threats

The Zurich Film Festival has dropped a scheduled screening of a documentary about Russian soldiers due to threats from Kiev, the newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung reported this week, citing a press statement. The decision was reportedly made for security concerns.

The documentary feature titled ‘Russians at War,’ filmed by Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova with Canadian government funding, was due to be screened at the festival next week. The feature tells the story of the seven months Trofimova spent with a Russian military unit at the front in the Ukraine conflict. In the film, she brought to the fore the personal stories of the soldiers she met.

The film premiered earlier this month at the Venice Film Festival, instantly drawing criticism from Kiev, which branded it “Russian propaganda.” A planned screening at the Toronto International Film Festival was subsequently canceled due to claims that staff had been receiving threats over the planned showings.

The Zurich festival says it was forced to drop it amid worries over the “safety of our audience, guests, partners and employees.” The decision was made shortly after Georgy Tikhy, spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, posted a warning on X demanding the documentary be removed from the festival’s program.

“We urge [Zurich Film Festival] organizers not to ruin the festival’s reputation by screening ‘Russians at War.’ This is a propaganda film that whitewashes war crimes, not a documentary,” the spokesman wrote in his post. Neue Zurcher Zeitung sources, however, claimed that festival organizers also experienced pressure over the planned showings from other representatives of the Ukrainian government and pro-Ukrainian activists, as well as threats expressed via social networks.

Despite caving in to the pressure, the festival announced that the film would remain eligible for prizes in the competition and that the jury would view it behind closed doors.

Trofimova previously explained that her goal in making the documentary was to refute the notion promoted by the West that all Russian soldiers are war criminals. She also said her film is expressly “anti-war,” and shows the “absolutely ordinary people” fighting in the Russian army. However, after the feature’s premiere in Venice, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture declared Trofimova a “threat to national security.”