Film-maker goes behind Russian lines in Ukraine
The Guardian|February 20, 2024
Sean Langan's intriguing documentary, Ukraine's War: The Other Side, comes to a halt on a log in a wood the Russians call "Sherwood Forest", near the frontline town of Avdiivka. It is Russia's most forward position, but the location is of no apparent military significance, and it is no longer obvious to the film-maker why he or the soldiers escorting him have risked their lives to go there.
Dan Sabbagh
Film-maker goes behind Russian lines in Ukraine

"I thought I'd find some answers in the forest, but all I found was more death and destruction," Langan narrates at the end of an hour-and-forty-minute ITV1 programme where the independent film-maker- uniquely for a Briton had access to Russian soldiers and civilians on the eastern front of the near two-year war.

The log is a place that hundreds of Russians have died to reach just before last Easter. "Christ has risen," the soldiers say with dry irony. In the mud beneath Langan lies spent shells; above are shattered trees - and both images bring to mind the protracted struggles of the first world war.

After promising to explain better the Russian perspective, Langan's film ends instead by questioning the war itself.

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