Trench Trailer: Shocking Documentary on Donbass War with Ukrainian Soldiers

A shocking documentary released on May 11 will take the trenches to the Donbass front line. We find that the soldiers of the 30th Battalion of the Ukrainian Army are confronting the Russian-backed separatists.

Director Loup Bureau will immerse us in this experience of war, at the height of men and in the heart of the trenches. Where everyone must protect themselves from death, but also try to restore normalcy in the abnormal world of conflict.

The French filmmaker shared the daily lives of Ukrainian soldiers trapped in trenches along the Donbas war front line that has been agitating the country since 2014.

Screened at the Venice Film Festival in September 2021, this fascinating documentary depicts an armed conflict that strangely resembles the 14-18 wars.

“The front is frozen for hundreds of kilometers. There are many trenches. This is a real positional war.”Explains the director in columns FranceLive.fr.

“That’s why I chose the black-and-white documentary. Digging into our culture and history is about this conflict and the past. I wanted to show that this type of conflict is still relevant in the 21st century.”he says.

To support this, the director also chose to shoot his work in 4/3 format, thus enhancing the impression of obscenity through a reduced shot.

Because of their time with the soldiers, they forgot about the Loup Bureau and its camera.

“It allowed me to capture moments I had not seen anywhere else. I was able to capture the physical, but above all the mental fatigue of these soldiers. 95% of them do nothing and wait. I tried to understand their lives, who they are and show them respect and sensitivity.”– Says the film director.

Note that Loup Bureau is also a journalist. For several years he worked abroad as a reporter of the war. Thus, he covered the Arab Spring in Egypt and the war in Syria before focusing on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the Donbas region.