I first met Ukrainian film director Sergei Loznitsa in 2012 when he was working on his feature film In the fog was on his way to the Cannes Film Festival. The film, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by war veteran Wassil Bykau, received the International Film Critics’ Award. Between then and now there are ten years, some developments in the war, another dozen documentaries and feature films – and a few meetings with him. His films of recent years include works such as the documentaries Maidan (2014) on the events in Kyiv in 2013/2014, Austerlitz (2016), an uncommented observation of the daily flow of tourists in the Sachsenhausen Memorial, or day of the victory (2018), who observed the hustle and bustle on May 8 around the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park. For the movie The process (2018) Loznitsa reassembled archival footage of a Stalin-era show trial to expose the staging of a deception. In between, feature films such as The soft (2017) and Donbass (2018), who describes the conditions in the war zones in eastern Ukraine in vignettes that oscillate between deep black comedy and horror film. Last year he participated Babi Yar. Context and Mr. Landsbergis (about the founder of the Lithuanian independence movement) again presents two documentary works.
Loznitsa, born in 1964 in Baranavichy, Belarus, grew up in Kyiv, studied applied mathematics there and worked at the Cybernetics Institute and beyond as a translator from Japanese. After the fall of communism in 1991, he went to Moscow to train as a film director at the Russian state film school WGIK. After several years as a documentary filmmaker in St. Petersburg, Loznitsa moved to Berlin, where he has lived since the early 2000s.
In the years before, I had spoken to him repeatedly about the different possibilities that documentary and feature film offer and about the cross-connections between film, languages and mathematics in his films. Or about the role of the Japanese language or hieroglyphs for the film image. Why he became a filmmaker at all was also an issue. His parents worked all their lives as aircraft designers for the Antonov works in Kyiv. At the time, studying mathematics was also a way for him to avoid being drafted into the Afghan war. Loznitsa told me on another occasion that some of his friends never returned from the war, others were severely traumatized. War has become a central theme in his work. It was often about the wars of the 20th century. Now a new war has broken out in Ukraine that we need to talk about.
der Freitag: Mr. Loznitsa, who do you think is to blame for the current misery in Ukraine?
Sergei Loznitsa: First and foremost, of course, the criminal Russian regime. But the international community, Europe and the US also bear a significant degree of responsibility for what is happening now, because for years they have been trying to appease the gangsters and do business with Mr Putin according to the rules of pragmatic politics, Realpolitik do. In doing so, they have contributed to the consolidation of the evil and corrupt regime run by a gangster.
Is there a way back from the recent development between Russia and Ukraine?
What do you mean by “way back”? There is a way forward that would mean the end of this war, the surrender of Russia, and the trial of the war criminals before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Sergei Loznitsa was born in 1964, grew up in Kyiv and graduated from the film school in Moscow. With the documentary short film Today we are building a house he won the Golden Dove at the Dokfest Leipzig in 1996
In addition to many other topics, you also deal with the motif of the pawn sacrifice, which is very pronounced in your film “In the Fog”. Do you see the danger that Ukraine is now being pawned, given the lack of determination on the part of many international institutions, public figures and governments?
Not at all. But on the contrary. Day by day we see international support for the Ukrainian cause growing stronger, more coherent and more universal. We see tremendous global support and solidarity manifesting in many ways – from military assistance to humanitarian efforts. We see reports of British and Japanese volunteers joining the Ukrainian Territorial Army to fight against Russian invaders, we see Polish volunteers heading to the border to help refugees. Politically, too, support for Ukraine has reached unprecedented levels. Ukraine has officially submitted an application to join the EU, which is now being processed in a fast-track procedure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the rising star of world politics, is in daily contact with the leaders of the free world. It seems the world is finally waking up. It is now clear that Ukrainians are fighting not only for their own freedom and independence, but for all of Europe – to defend Europe from the barbaric, criminal regime that poses a global threat.
You have just canceled your membership in the European Film Academy. Why?
I found EFA’s first statement very shameful – it was too ambiguous, too weak. They have since reconsidered their position and issued another statement condemning the war and Russian aggression.
As a rational person, you are a film director but also a mathematician, what can you imagine as a solution to the current situation?
The surrender of Russia, the return of all occupied territories – including Crimea and the Donbass region, followed by the trial of the war criminals at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The next step is the de-Sovietization of Russia. A similar process was to take place as in Germany after the end of World War II, when society was denazified. One has to be clear that the Soviet ideology and system are alive and that Putin and his regime are direct descendants of Stalin. For years, the West has ignored the crimes of “new Russia,” preferring to do business with her. Now is the time to face evil and defeat it.
You are about to finish your documentary The Natural History of Destruction. What topics are you currently working on?
I just got a movie called Kiev trial based on archival footage of the trial of Nazi criminals that took place in Kyiv in 1946. Now I’m working on The Natural History of Destruction, another archive film inspired by WG Sebald’s essay. The film is about the Allied bombing of German cities during World War II. It is about the use of the civilian population as a “weapons of war”. A topic that is still very relevant today. In April of this year I wanted to start preparing for the shooting of the feature film Chapter Yar begin. Half of the shooting was to take place in Kharkiv and the other half in Lviv.