Cannes 2014: Maidan review – an unblinking look at Ukraine's history in action

[pampango]

Sergei Loznitsa's documentary about the anti-government protests that forced out Ukraine's president is a vital and urgent film – even if his rigorous method doesn't help to convey the broader picture


Faces in the crowd ... Maidan

The Cannes film festival could hardly be more topical than by programming this documentary about the anti-government protests in Ukraine that climaxed earlier this year with the ousting of the country's president, Viktor Yanukovych. Its director is Sergei Loznitsa, who has accrued considerable Cannes credibility points with his previous two features, My Joy and In the Fog, which were both selected for competition.

His film sites itself very firmly among the camps and activists thronging Kiev's Independence Square; these are Ukraine's strongly pro-European contingent, who were appalled at Yanukovych's refusal to sign an association agreement with the European Union. The sense of participating in epochal history-making events is there from the start: Loznitsa's opening shot is of the massed crowd singing Ukraine's mournful national anthem.

Loznitsa's stringent method pays considerably more dividends in the second half of his film: the mood in the square suddenly turns menacing after the turn of the new year, as Yanukovych's riot police start to make incursions into the protest camp, and snipers take up position on surrounding buildings. During one tense confrontation, the camera moves for the only time I can actually recall: the operator, seemingly under gunfire, picks the it up physically and moves backwards – revealing a sinister column of black-clad, metal shielded riot police standing silently behind.

As history records, the explosion of violence in late February led directly to Yanukovych's fall; what we see of it, again, is from the point of view of the crowd. Flares in the distance mean Molotov cocktails, stones fly past, surges of people run this way and that, themselves unsure of where the danger is precisely to be found. One long sequence has a pleading voice using the square's public address system to beg for doctors to help the wounded; at the same time he exhorts demonstrators and tells them where they are needed.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/may/21/cannes-2014-maidan-film-review-ukraine1

A very interesting, if unusually done, film. I suppose it will take a long time to get from Cannes to the US.

It sounds like the director focuses more on the crowd as the key participant rather than focusing on other players or the role that Maidan played in events still unfolding in Ukraine.

[frazzled]

1. Here's the trailer (French subtitles)

No US distributor yet (per IndieWire)

[pampango]

2. Thanks for the trailer, frazzled. n/t