CPH:DOX 2024 – Intercepted

It is difficult, if not impossible, to understand what is going through the minds of the Russian soldiers fighting on the front lines in Ukraine. What are they afraid of? Can they sleep at night? Eavesdropping on what they tell their family members back home in Russia brings us closer to an answer that reveals something fundamental about the banality of evil. ‘Intercepted’ confronts us with the Ukraine of today. Destroyed houses and roads, abandoned and bombed, but between the rubble, flowers grow again. The soundtrack consists of the phone conversations the Ukrainian state has intercepted from Russian soldiers as they call home to tell of the murders and abuses they have committed against Ukrainian civilians. Some speak with perverse pride, others with despair. On the other end of the line, we overhear reactions ranging from care and concern to pure echoes of the regime’s hateful propaganda. In a simple and eerily effective move, Ukrainian director Oksana Karpovych allows her film to slowly emerge from the void between what we see and what we hear.