{"id":295231,"date":"2024-05-15T15:43:24","date_gmt":"2024-05-15T12:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uacrisis.org\/rosijska-realnist-krokuye-svitom-filmy-festyvalyu-chas-geroyiv"},"modified":"2024-05-24T14:38:10","modified_gmt":"2024-05-24T11:38:10","slug":"rosijska-realnist-krokuye-svitom-filmy-festyvalyu-chas-geroyiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uacrisis.org\/en\/rosijska-realnist-krokuye-svitom-filmy-festyvalyu-chas-geroyiv","title":{"rendered":"Russian \u2018Cinema Reality\u2019 Marches Around the World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anastasiia Ratieieva, HWAG\/UCMC analyst<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is well known that in autocracies, the documentary genre serves as the regime’s humble servant. Films such as Triumph of the Will (1935, directed by Leni Riefenstahl), which glorifies Hitler’s aesthetics, or Ordinary Fascism (1965, directed by Mikhail Romm), which conceals the facts of Soviet Union-Third Reich cooperation and falsely attributes some of the Stalinist system’s crimes (for example, the Katyn massacre) to the Nazis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin’s Russia is replicating the experience of its totalitarian forefathers. In February 2024, a \u201cdocumentary\u201d film festival called Time of Heroes took place in Moscow and other Russian cities. In addition to the Russian screenings, the festival was held in 14 countries around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After analysing the Time of Heroes festival’s content, we identified the Kremlin’s main messages, which are broadcast to an international audience by cinema, one of Russia’s most powerful ‘radiating towers’ of propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Documentaries for Export<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Time of Heroes festival’s organisers describe their cinema halls as “the territory of truth.” Propaganda uses the ‘documentary’ feature to elevate fabricated stories to the same level as facts. As a result, the films from ‘Time of Heroes’ should be considered pseudo-documentaries, as the accents and meanings used in them reflect the reality created by Kremlin propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time of Heroes claims to be an international film festival. In 2023, the festival screened films in several Russian cities as well as in Ankara, Turkey. In 2024, 14 countries, including Russia, will host the festival: Argentina, Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Peru, Tajikistan, Turkey, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The propaganda was also amplified in the quasi-states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

International screenings promoted the concept of an \u201calternative’ truth”\u2014Russia’s perspective on Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine. According to Mahmoud Abdel-Samia, the director of Cairo Cinema House, “The works of Russian documentary filmmakers have always been popular with Egyptians due to the authors’ sincere and truthful view of world events”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The festival was held at the end of February, but the propaganda machine continues to spread the message to a global audience. In March, the Russian Cultural Center in Buenos Aires hosted a screening of a film from the festival program at the National University of Avellaneda. Students from the Department of Journalism watched a film about Russian’ military commanders’. ‘Argentine students learned that there is a real hunt for film crews and that facts about Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine are being suppressed by the Western media,’ wrote RT, the propaganda arm of the Time of Heroes organisation, following the screening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 2024, RT hosted a series of festival film screenings in Sri Lanka’s capital and four Italian cities. In Rome, a Ukrainian protest was held in response to the screening of a propaganda film. The branches of the Russian Cooperation for the Promotion of the Russian Language, Russian Science, and Culture serve as propaganda dissemination centres during the festival. The majority of The Time of Heroes screenings take place at Russian Houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n