Donbass

Donbass (2018) is a war tragicomedy by filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa — watch online on iFILM. A co-production across Germany, France, the Netherlands, Romania and Ukraine, it was assembled from real amateur footage captured on phones and dashcams in the self-proclaimed republics of eastern Ukraine.

No protagonist, no single storyline — just thirteen linked vignettes. Extras in stage makeup deliver invented TV interviews to rolling cameras. Bus passengers are shaken down under the pretence of a document check. A noisy wedding fills a bullet-marked street a few blocks from active fire. The scenes chain together until normalcy and absurdity become the same thing. Actors including Boris Kamorzin and Liudmyla Smorodyna play people who barely need to be performed.

Loznitsa observes rather than argues: hold the camera long enough on something absurd and it stops looking absurd. That quiet displacement is the film's sharpest edge. It claimed the Best Director prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes 2018. Stream Donbass online on iFILM.