Intercepted

What drives the people who come to your country to wage war? INTERCEPTED is an attempt to find an answer by showing two parallel worlds. The camera registers images of destruction in unhurried shots, in which we see Ukrainian villages, towns, houses and motorways after their liberation from the Russian occupation. Throughout the film, the soundtrack forms a shocking counterpoint. We listen to the recordings of telephone conversations between Russian soldiers and their families. It’s hard to decide which element is more devastating: the soldiers’ confessions of the rape, looting and brutal torture of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war or the (mainly) female voices from “back home” that bear witness to chauvinism and hatred, disinformation and schizophrenic propaganda. (Berlinale)