Shown in the 32nd Astra Film Festival’s Eastern European Competition after a world premiere in DocLisboa last year and screenings in ZagrebDox and FIDMarseille, among other outings, Russian director Masha Chernaya’s documentary The Shards [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Masha Chernaya
scheda film] is a compelling piece of cinema. It’s highly personal, as the director mostly turns the camera on herself and her loved ones, but it also reveals versions of Moscow and Russia which are quite different from what the country’s government would have us believe.

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The Shards effectively becomes a shattered mirror of the “Russian soul”, inviting viewers into a space dominated by an abyss between regular people and the leaders of the world’s biggest country which spans as many as 11 different time zones. We see the director, her loved ones and others shocked at the news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We feel their fear and their uncertainty over the future, and we know they have nothing to do with this war which is by no means their fight. They find various ways of coping with the situation: the director’s friends organise fight clubs where they punch each other to the point of blood, or they organise parties where they drink to the point of forgetting.

The Shards was screened in Astra’s Both Sides of the Bloody Frontline section, together with features such as David Borenstein’s Mr. Nobody Against Putin [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], Aboozar Amini’s Kabul, Between Prayers [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] and Alisa Kovalenko’s My Dear Théo [+leggi anche:
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scheda film]. Watching them together, we understand how simplistic our view of a given country can be: Russia is more than Vladimir Putin’s obsession with Ukraine, Afghanistan is more than the decisions made by the Taliban government and Israel is more than the country’s genocide in Palestine. What Chernaya shows with her documentary is that, behind every idiotic policy there are millions who don’t agree with it.

Usually, documentaries focus on the “bigger picture”, foregrounding journalists or activists fighting a dictator’s regime, for example. Chernaya takes the opposite direction, focusing her camera on compatriots who are torn between their love for their country and their disdain for their leaders. There are countless scenes showing ordinary people overwhelmed by their new reality: a man holding a Russian flag in the middle of a crowd, for example. He’s obviously living with a mental disability, but he’ll soon be sent to the front, regardless. “One bullet and I’ll be dead”, he laments. It might not be these people’s war, but many of them have died fighting in it against their will.

In one of the film’s most powerful scenes, we see crowds of people looking at a night sky filled with red lights. The booming we hear recalls bloody fighting on the frontline, but they’re actually watching fireworks. Meanwhile, only a few hundreds of kilometres away in Ukraine, the same booming sounds signal death, not celebration. Chernaya creates many other similar moments where sharp contrasts bring to mind the afore-mentioned abyss, such as the juxtaposition of Moscow’s golden church domes with derelict buildings where homeless people are sleeping.

In another scene, we see the director talking with her father whose opinions about Russia’s reality are quite different from her own. While she feels pushed out of her country by the democracy crumbling around her, he feels at peace with the world, shrugging her concerns away. Ultimately, the director is there to witness, not to judge, but the audience feels her powerlessness and fully empathises with her.

The Shards was produced by Independent Film Project (Georgia) and Eversince (Germany).