Intercepted (F/F)

Dir. Oksana Karpovych | Canada | France | Ukraine | 93 min | 2024

During the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Russian soldiers have made thousands of phone calls from the battlefield to their families at home. The Ukrainian special services have been listening in on those calls since the start of the invasion, regularly posting excerpts from them online. Intercepted merges recordings of these phone calls with static shots from war-torn Ukraine, dropping the viewer directly into the aftermath of the violence of war. Some shots are of empty apartments, some of Ukrainians going about their daily lives, and some are from a tank moving through the broken landscape. The remarkable result is a multilayered film that functions as a devastating portrait of contemporary Russia and the dehumanising power of war and military propaganda. The voices we hear are diverse in their concerns and attitudes but few have any sympathy for the supposed enemy they are fighting. Spliced together with brilliant editing and sound design, Intercepted resonates with the full power of cinema and will continue to occupy your consciousness long after the credits roll.