In Eastern Europe, if we are to believe the strongest films that reach us, the sun has stopped rising. In its place, for any promise, the anticipated night of the apocalypse darkens the sky. His beasts are unleashed, run in the forests, crime and corruption, stupidity and carnage ignite a world poisoned by the hatred of all against all. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, with its unfathomable barbarity, its galloping paranoia, its proud threat to atomize the world, today only crystallizes a feeling that a cloud of terrifying films, in the east of the Europe, has been on our screens for several years.
Let us list them, for the record, noting in passing that their authors, wherever they come from, align themselves with no other conflict than that, immemorial, of the freedom to think and to create against the alienation and tyranny. There are four Russian films there: Lack of love (2017) by Andrei Zviaguintsev, Tesnota. A cramped life (2017) by Kantemir Balagov, Unclenched Fists (2021) de Kira Kovalenko, Tchaikovsky’s Wife (coming soon) by Kirill Serebrennikov. Two Ukrainians: Babi Yar. Context (2022) de Serguei Loznitsa, Pamfir’s Oath (2022) de Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk. Deux hongrois : Evolution (2021) de Kornél Mundruczo, Natural Light (coming soon) from Dénes Nagy. Two Romanians: I don’t care if history considers us barbarians (2018) by Radu Jude, R.M.N. (2022) by Cristian Mungiu. A Georgian: At the beginning (2021) by Dea Kulumbegashvili.
Failing to describe each film in its singularity, we want, in a more essential way for our purpose, to bring out the great motives which haunt them, and which they share for all or part of them. We call the hatred of the neighbor. The break in parentage. The return to primitive forces (forests and beasts). Destruction by fire. The descent into the night. A general picture that evokes the old deuteronomic curses.
Destruction in progress
In the first chapter, a dark revival of populism, racism, anti-Semitism. A Jewish family expelled from a Caucasian republic plagued by the rise of Islamism (Tesnota. A cramped life). The hidden Holocaust massacre in Ukraine (Babi Yar. Context). The transmigration of genocidal trauma over three generations (Evolution). Romania’s contemporary Holocaust denial through the spectacular reconstruction of the massacre of twenty thousand Jews in Odessa by the troops of Marshal and Prime Minister Ion Antonescu (I don’t care if history considers us barbarians). A war crime committed on Soviet territory by Hungarian fascists during World War II (Natural Light). The call for the lynching of Pakistani bakers in a Romanian village (R.M.N.). The persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Georgia through intimidation, humiliation and rape (At the beginning).
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