Empathy through Suffering?
Documentary Films About the War against Ukraine
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Alongside press photos, news reports, and television documentaries, documentary films rank among the widely viewed means of reporting Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. They seize on images and video footage and distill them into narratives. These films portray the reality of war, suffering, and death in vastly different ways. Some rely on maintaining a sense of detachment, others on evoking emotion and intensity. Prime examples of this include Oksana Karpovych’s “Intercepted”, Anastasia Trofimova’s “Russians at War”, Mstyslav Chernov’s “20 Days in Mariupol”, and Vitaly Mansky “Eastern Front”.
(Osteuropa 3-4/2026, pp. 83–96)