Ukraine shakes up the Croisette with the relentless "Mariupolis 2"

• Ukraine is omnipresent on the screens of the Cannes Film Festival.

• After statements by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the opening and by exiled Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov on Wednesday evening on the steps, the festival is more blue and yellow than ever with

  “

  Mariupolis 2

  ”.

• The images filmed by the Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius, killed in Mariupol, clearly show the current daily life of Ukrainians under the bombs.

To say that Ukraine has been invited to Cannes is an understatement.

It occupies a prominent place both on the Marches and on the screens.

Emotion was at its peak this Thursday for the screening of

by Mantas Kvedaravicius and Hanna Bilobrova, presented in a special screening, all the more so since the Lithuanian filmmaker was killed by the Russian army last April.

“This film is his legacy, which testifies to his work as an anthropologist,” declared the co-director.

The surprise appearance of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during the opening night and the muscular declarations of exiled Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov who proclaimed "No to war" to applause at the end of the screening

had opened the dance.

, a documentary of relentless force that shows the daily life of Ukrainians under the bombs, is more significant than all the speeches.

Ordinary people in the face of war

Hanna Bilobrova, co-director and fiancée of the murdered filmmaker, worked closely with her editor Dounia Sichov to complete this film without music or commentary, but which grips the viewer's heart by revealing what the conflict is as seen from the height of citizens. and ordinary citizens facing unbounded horror.

How to cook, save your dog or recover the essentials in ruined houses: this is what

shows (so called because Mantas Kvedaravicius had filmed his first documentary there in 2016 during the Donbass war).

The scenes of violence, always suggested, are all the more powerful when townspeople recover a generator under two corpses or are chased out of the church where they had taken refuge.

And tears well up before an old man who mourns his dead birds and his destroyed house, asking why he worked 32 years to lose everything on March 4 in a bombardment.

Compassion and Introspection

At the end of the screening, the applause took a few moments to break out as the audience was in shock.

Fixed shots on the rubble or on the city in flames with the shooting as the only soundtrack predisposed more to introspection than to enthusiasm at the appearance of the end credits.

What

reveals with implacable sobriety is that we could easily be in the place of Ukrainians who are so close to us.

The cheers that celebrated the work reported by Hanna Bilobrova had the power of a cinema that clashes with current events to shake people's consciences.

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