You might think a major film festival would think twice before promoting a film of Russian propaganda, especially in a city with high numbers of Ukrainian-Canadians. Despite that, they went ahead and showed the film earlier in the week anyway. That has led to significant protests and condemnation from Ukrainian leaders and even the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland, herself of Ukrainian descent.
Oh, and about those “significant threats,” the Toronto Police Service says they never received any reports whatsoever of any threats.
Source: Screen Daily
In a disturbing and unprecedented development, Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has paused three upcoming screenings of the documentary Russians At War after top brass were made aware of “significant threats to festival operations and public safety”.
The latest episode in the controversy to engulf Russian Canadian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova’s TIFF Docs selection came one day after the festival pledged to continue with public screenings, despite protests by what were understood to be members of Toronto’s Canadian-Ukrainian community outside Tuesday’s press and industry screening at Scotiabank.
Russians At War, an official Canada-France co-production from Raja Pictures and CAPA Presse (Films À Cinq) with funding from several Canadian agencies, was scheduled to screen three times this weekend before TIFF put the presentations on hold.
“Effectively immediately, TIFF is forced to pause the upcoming screenings of Russians at War on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,” the festival said on Thursday, “as we have been made aware of significant threats to festival operations and public safety.
The producers of the film released a statement that said in part:
This is not a win for Canadians, including Ukrainian Canadians. We condemn Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Ukraine Ambassador to Canada Yuliya Kovaliv, Consul General of Ukraine in Toronto Oleh Nikolenko, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Senators Donna Dasko and Stanley Kutcher, MP Yvan Baker (Etobicoke Centre), MPP Christine Hogarth (Etobicoke-Lakeshore) and other political and community “leaders.” Their irresponsible, dishonest, and inflammatory public statements have incited the violent hate that has led to TIFF’s painful decision to pause its presentation of “Russians at War”.
They called it an “affront” and censorship. (I suspect they are all assholes on the Kremlin’s payroll.)
Toronto Film Festival eventually had to cancel the screening of “Russians at War” (which they described as “a spellbinding tale of sacrifice and disillusionment in which soldiers resemble pawns in a nefarious game”) due to massive backlash from the Ukrainian community.
18/19 pic.twitter.com/OsMaVKkY68
— Pekka Kallioniemi (@P_Kallioniemi) September 13, 2024
And the long thread by Pekka Kallioniemi on Russian asset Anastasia Trofimova who also used to work for Margarita Simonyan at RT, and therefore the Kremlin.
The Globe and Mail‘s review of the film was glowing, as they called it “extraordinary” and compared it to a recent Oscar-winning film All Quiet on the Western Front.
Most others disagreed, and even more with the Globe’s naive dismissal of the Russians’ hand in this transparent whitewashing of their war.
And this is a good summation of this farce as it played out.
And the community note here said it all.
