BY DASHA LITVINOVA
The movie centers around a renowned violinist from Belgium arriving in Kyiv to perform. The date is February 2022, and his trip is upended as Russia starts bombing Ukraine. The musician survives a series of “inhuman crimes and bloody provocations by Ukrainian nationalists,” and he wants to tell the world “what it was really like.”
“The Witness” — a state-sponsored drama that premiered in Russia on Aug. 17 — is the first feature film about the 18-month-old invasion. It depicts Ukrainian troops as violent neo-Nazis who torture and kill their own people. One even wears a T-shirt with Hitler on it; another is shown doing drugs. It also has the main character’s young son wondering: “Isn’t Ukraine Russia?”
It’s the narrative the Kremlin has been promoting since the first days of the war — all packaged up in a motion picture.
The release of “The Witness”
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