PUBLISHED on August 14, 2025, 12:36 PM EDT – Key Points and Summary – The new documentary “Russians at War” offers a rare and controversial look at the Ukraine conflict from the perspective of Russian soldiers.
-The film, from Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova, follows a unit for seven months, exploring the varied motivations of its troops.
-Labeled an “anti-war film” by its creators, it has nevertheless sparked protests and calls for its cancellation at international film festivals.
-While not a cinematic masterpiece like “20 Days in Mariupol,” the film is also not pro-Putin propaganda.
Why ‘Russians at War’ Is Not Quite Propaganda
Since the launch of Russia’s war in Ukraine in 2022, there have been several acclaimed nonfiction films, many of them shot on the frontlines of the war.
Nearly all of them, starting with the Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol, have focused on Ukraine’s side of the war, often following Ukrainian soldiers and told in a way that’s sympathetic to Ukraine.
Now, we have the first film about this war shown internationally, which tells the story of the war from the Russian side.
It’s called Russians at War, and it comes from Anastasia Trofimova, a Russian-Canadian filmmaker who also serves as the cinematographer.
Like “20 Days in Mariupol” and other films about the war, “Russians at War” appeared at international film festivals.
But unlike those other films, Russians at War was met with protests and calls for its showing to be canceled.
And now, a year after it drew protests at the Toronto International Film Festival, Russians at War is getting neither a theatrical release nor even traditional video-on-demand distribution, but has been made available through a direct-to-rental scheme on the film’s traditional website.
Russians At War: How It’s Told
The film is introduced with a great hook: The filmmaker meets a man named Ilya, dressed as Santa Claus, on a Moscow subway train on New Year’s Eve, as 2022 turned to 2023. She finds out Ilya, who is Ukrainian, was headed to the front to fight on the Russian side.
Trofimova then spent about seven months embedded with a Russian Army unit fighting in Ukraine. Her presence there was not authorized and tolerated to various levels, depending on who was commanding the unit at the time.
We spend a lot of time with the Russian soldiers, who share their hopes, their fears, and their motivations. Some are motivated by the money they can earn as soldiers, others by patriotism, and other factors.
The film portrays the Russian war effort as chaotic and disorganized, with soldiers who are not exactly a lean, trim fighting machine.
“In Russian media, they’re heroes who always win and never die,” the director’s voice-over says of the soldiers, compared to the Western conception of them as “war criminals.”
The filmmakers have dubbed Russians at War an anti-war film.
“The war machine dragged many to the front, exploiting their sense of patriotism, friendship and financial need,” the director says in voice-over near the end.
Over footage of a military cemetery, the director continues, “Here lie the ordinary people on whose bones big politics is made.”
My Review of the Documentary: Is It Propaganda? Not Exactly
From a filmmaking standpoint, Russians at War is not nearly as impressive an achievement as 20 Days in Mariupol or 2000 Meters to Andriivka, the unofficial sequel from earlier this summer, also made by the same filmmakers, led by director Mstyslav Chernov.
It isn’t nearly as nerve-wracking and skillfully put together as those films. Perhaps because it’s set over such an extended period, the palpable tension isn’t quite there.
The film is presented mainly in the cinéma vérité style, although the filmmaker also does voice-over work and occasionally appears on camera.
In the new film, simply by recounting the Russian side of the war, it becomes more sympathetic to the Russian war effort than the earlier films, and I would argue, more sympathetic than the Russian war effort deserves.
But all that said, there’s a pretty large gap between what a full-on propaganda film in favor of the Russian war effort would look like and what this movie is.
There’s no effort to extol the glory of Vladimir Putin or the Russian state, nor does the filmmaker try to argue, say, that NATO’s expansion justifies the Ukrainian invasion. However, some of the soldiers say things along those lines.
Don’t Ban This Film
After having its world premiere in Venice last September, Russians at War had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival about two weeks later. This screening led to protests, led by the Ukrainian community in Toronto and joined by some politicians, calling for the film to be dropped from the festival.
The film indeed premiered, although the festival did cancel some public showings amid threats it received.
This type of reception has become a disturbing trend, where pressure is exerted to prevent public screenings of films about wars and other controversial political matters. This has happened, in the last two years, to films on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The mayor of Miami Beach even threatened to pull the lease of a theater that was showing the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, while there was picketing this spring of the premiere of Marvel’s latest Captain America film, seemingly because an Israeli actress, Shira Haas, was playing a character with a comic book backstory that involved being Israeli.
Such protests almost always have something in common: The people protesting have not seen the film in question, and are critiquing an idea they have of what the film is, rather than the reality.
It’s an attitude that seems to have originated on the left but has spread across the political spectrum, characterized by not wanting to “platform” certain people and certain views, and by believing that the inclusion of a film in a festival or its showing in a theater will somehow cause real-world harm. This is a tendency that’s very anti-art and anti-speech, and altogether unhealthy.
The Bottom Line
Russians at War is far from the best documentary made about this particular war, nor is it the only one scheduled for release this month, as two others, Sisters of Ukraine and Checkpoint Zoo, are set for release in August. But the idea that its perspective shouldn’t be allowed is simply wrong.
About the Author: Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review, and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, national security, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
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