SYNOPSIS

In the Donbass, war is called peace, propaganda is uttered as truth and hatred is declared to be love.

In the Donbass, a region of Eastern Ukraine, a hybrid war takes place, involving an open armed conflict alongside killings and robberies on a mass scale perpetrated by separatist gangs. A journey through the Donbass unfolds as a chain of curious adventures, where the grotesque and drama are as intertwined as life and death. This is not a tale of one region, one country or one political system. It is about a world, lost in post-truth and fake identities. It is about each and every one of us.

From acclaimed Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa (My Joy, A Gentle Creature), Donbass is a unique take on one of the most disturbing and threatening of contemporary conflicts, a grotesque tour de force, brilliantly, if harrowingly, imaging with stunning cinematography courtesy of Oleg Mutu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days).

Winner of the Un Certain Regard award for Best Director at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival

“Filled with the violence and Orwellian unreality ruling eastern Ukraine, Sergei Loznitsa’s feverish procession of scenes is handled with steely control.”– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

 “A scathing portrait of a society where human interaction has descended to a level of barbarity more in keeping with late antiquity than the so-called contemporary civilized world.” – Variety