‘Invasion’ review: Sergei Loznitsa’s documentary on Ukrainian life during the war is quietly devastating

The filmography of the Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa can be neatly divided into three genre categories: feature films (the last two are Donbass AND A gentle creatureboth from the last decade), documents compiled entirely from archival sources (Kiev trial) and documentaries about current events, shot by Łoźnica himself and petite teams. The most renowned example from the last category would be Maidan (2014), a moving, penetrating, mosaic portrait of the demonstrations against Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev’s main square in 2013–2014 that ultimately turned violent.

With your newest one InvasionLoznica gives Maidan a cinematic sibling, a work with a forceful family feel due to its urgency and majestic, tragic scope, building a portrait of a nation at war. But while the high level of no voiceover, subtitling or editing is based on the same modus operandi as used for Maidanwhat is even stronger here is the sense of direct involvement of the filmmaker, empathy, rage and, dare we call it, national pride.

This is not to say that the film is chauvinistic in any way, and it must be admitted that it even contains sounds of Ukrainian citizens complaining about President Volodymyr Zelensky and his regime at the beginning. This doesn’t appear to be something that has ever happened in many of the documents that have come out of Ukraine since the Russians invaded in February 2022.

There is no doubt that Loznitsa is true to his compatriot, but he and his crew do not become part of history like the journalist-filmmakers behind 20 days in Mariupol, but not that there’s anything wrong with this first-person strategy. Nearest Invasion The idea is to make passersby look straight at the camera and, for a split second, be curious about who is filming them. Most people who pass in front of Loznitsa and cinematographers Evgeny Adamenko and wide-angle lenses Pyotr Pavlus are too busy with life to stop and talk to the filmmakers.

With almost two years of footage and what must have been a huge structural task for the editing team (honors and maybe even medals go to Danielius Kokanauskis and Loznitsa himself), the material seems to naturally divide into chapters and sections. The rhythm of changing seasons is felt as one winter follows another, and summer brings lush vegetation, but does not cause a break in the war. Meanwhile, a different rhythm is established as we move between footage of funerals (scenes from the opening of the film), marriages, recent parents in the maternity hospital, childhood (primary school children moving to bomb shelters during an air raid, where they sit at a different desk), servants military service, and then more funerals, not necessarily in this order.

You can often hear voices like those complaining about Zelensky. However, given Loznitsa’s signature long shots that draw crowds, such as the panoramic 18^vola century-old canvas, it is not always clear who is speaking or whether he is even in the frame. And yet there are moments of touching intimacy, particularly in scenes in the maternity ward, such as the one in which a father dressed like many men in combat fatigues meets his newborn son for the first time. And despite the bleakness of war, there is time to follow the volunteers who ride near the front, delivering care packages and tactical medicines, and who take the time to visit a kindergarten – one dressed as Santa Claus, the other as a giant pink cat (also in combat uniform) – to give gifts to children.

In typically surly Slavic style, children are jokingly warned that they won’t get sweets unless they smile, so everyone complies. But there’s no hiding the trauma noticeable on the faces of everyone here, from the little children singing songs in the bunker to the stoic ancient woman rebuilding her bombed-out house brick by brick. The result is a deeply moving, poetic work of cinema that deserves to be seen outside the festival circuit.