09/11/2022 - The third full-length documentary by Ukrainian director Korney Gritsyuk is dedicated, like his previous film, to the Donetsk region

Korney Gritsyuk’s Cottbus-screened Eurodonbas [+see also:
trailer
interview: Korney Gritsyuk
film profile] begins with footage taken from drones. Viewers see the territory of Donbas, which they know as the epicentre of the coal industry, and which, in 2014, was partially occupied by Russian separatists. One-hundred-and-twenty years ago, the city of Yuzivka was founded on the site of Donetsk. This strange name, also spelled Hughesovka, came from the name of the founder of the city, John James Hughes, a Welshman who came to the future Donetsk region with the aim of industrialising it. Here, houses were built for mining employees, but now, these ancient buildings no longer fit in with the urban architecture, which was mainly constructed during the Soviet era. Since 1961, the city has been called Donetsk, and no one remembers John James Hughes, although there is a monument to him in the centre and a popular bar is named after him.

This film by Gritsyuk, also the man behind the documentary film Train: Kyiv-War, which also dealt with the subject of Donbas, is a call, first and foremost, to deconstruct the Soviet myths surrounding the Donetsk region. After all, it is believed that Donbas acquired its industrial power and strength in the Stalin era. However, Gritsyuk conducted significant and in-depth research, which has resulted in a film about how the Belgians, French and Welsh, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, built factories and developed industry on the territory of the future Donbas. At the same time, the helmer explores the history not only of Donetsk, but also of Lysichansk, Druzhkivka and Mariupol.

Gritsyuk has made a light film, which, for all its television-like content, is an important historical document. This is a mainstream, science-based movie that is able to capture one’s interest with its intriguing facts that can become real discoveries for the audience.

There are two levels of expertise involved in the film. Firstly, there are experts who provide a more general, overarching context, such as the former Ukrainian Ambassador to Belgium, Yevhen Bersheda, and historians Igor Kozlovsky, Leonid Marushchak and Larisa Yakubova. These people are serious researchers who are well aware of the context of this topic, and they provide a holistic background for the story. Gritsyuk, in the process of working on the film, recorded lengthy interviews with them, and some of this material was used in the doc. On another level, we have the local experts – that is, people in these eastern cities who show locations and the architectural heritage that was still there at that time. Now, after the start of a full-scale war, many of these rare architectural structures have already been destroyed.

No matter how sad and scary it sounds, Eurodonbas is the last remaining document of peaceful life in Donbas. Having said that, this life was only relatively peaceful, because since 2014, some territories have been partially occupied by the Russian military. And if Mariupolis 2 [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Mantas Kvedaravičius, who died at the hands of the Russian army, was the first wartime document in Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale war, then Gritsyuk’s film still retains the ghostly glimmer of a peaceful past. The movie should especially be seen by European viewers to help them understand that the conflict in Donbas, which was the seed of the war in Ukraine, has no viable basis. Donbas was originally European, and only after that was it swallowed up by Soviet industrialisation.

Eurodonbas is a Ukrainian film produced by 435 Films.