Intercepted
An unusual approach is offered by the new documentary “Intercepted” directed by Oksana Karpovych. Many gallant documentary filmmakers and journalists have recorded the war on the territory of Ukraine since it started in February 2022; some, Karpovych among them, captures many of the well-known posters of victory over Ukraine’s determination that we have become accustomed to seeing in documentaries and articles about war (including the award-winning feature films “20 Days in Mariupol” and “Porcelain War”) but with the exception of recording videos, Karpovych uses the arial footage and faces of the rage machine together with the recorded phone calls made by soldiers inside Russia chasing the picturesque detail as the audio spine of her picture. Balancing the documents of destruction and the words of the destroying enables an understanding of the physical, psychological and emotional scars such a grievous campaign will instil for many years in many generations to come across both sides of the line of the conflict.
As “Intercepted” puts it Ukrainian special services were able to listen to the phone calls the Russian soldiers made and posted them over the internet. The audio fragments featured in the film are cut from calls made during the period from March to November 2022. Already the situation is bleak and low spirits are common. Sitting at home are their anxious wives and mothers – the soldiers weep and tell the mother where he is and when will it be possible to come back.
The soldiers refrain from action since they cannot give up their location, and they can only pray for the conflict to seek a resolution soon enough. Some of the dialer sentiments are heartbreaking: soldiers bequeath their world over the telephone on tape, children looking for their daddies, some shout over the phone to ask what the war is all about while others are claiming reasons of the invasions were to protect the party border. This disinformation effect can be seen in such personal moments. More dreadful however are the calls where Russian soldiers refer to Ukrainians in hateful chants, and boast about how much they enjoyed torturing ‘the enemy,’ describing that the war has made them feel dehumanized and mentally broken ‘imagine the things I’ve seen,’ say the mortified soldiers in comforting their mothers. She says in response, ‘these are not humans.’
And while the calls are indeed painful to manage, Karpovych goes on to juxtapose the horrifyingly graphic accounts of violence with the strange emptiness and apparent desolation of derelict and broken down apartments in places where time still seems frozen and where the locals do not seem bothered as they go about their day trying to get basic things done in the war.
Scenes of Ukrainians gathered at a lake or in a lawn are intercut with footage of destroyed Russian tanks, ruined structures and great mounds of wreckage. These are the people whom the Russian Federation has ordered its soldiers to kill. The houses go from mild to severe ravaged. Some had their serrated windows destructed causing their drapes to dance around in the breeze as if the winds were possessed by the very people who resided there. Others are clad in soot stained pampered walls and gray dust, remnants of the brutality that they have witnessed and the trauma that they have withstood. They are in effect static scenes of some beauty that could hardly be turned away from during the interception of the phone conversations.
By concealing both the contacts and the geographical locations shown in the feature, “Intercepted” emerges as a striking book of portraits of the overwhelming millions of lives cut off by this conflict. It is understandable that combatants can be dismissed as nothing more than the enemy but Karpovych’s documentary goes out of its way to appreciate them, how and why is it that they have given themselves license to kill civilians on sight, committing astounding levels of torture, or for that matter, why they are annexing Ukrainian territory at all. And while “Intercepted” does not give a platform to the voices of Ukrainians, their strength is what pervades the frame of Karpovych’s observational film.
“Intercepted” demonstrates how deep the wounds of government propaganda can be among its own and even other nations, by simply positioning the confessions from the phone calls against the backdrop of desolate remains and the still alive.
Also, Watch On Putlocker.