Under an intensely red safe-light, a photographic print begins to develop before our eyes: from close up, two tanks move away from us – their turrets pointing into the distance. The tanks, provenance and location all unexplained, are ominously close – so close we can touch them – but yet remain out of reach, strange. The tanks are, of course, somewhere in eastern Ukraine. This image, which opens Release Oleg Sentsov (a new film about the film director from Simferopol, Crimea, currently detained on terrorism charges in Moscow), seems to capture much of the current conflict – so heavily 'mediated' for people outside the borders of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO), but so violent, terrifying and destructive for people caught inside of it.
Unfortunately, though, just as Ukraine has only recently 'arrived' in the European mindset, so has it disappeared. Mission creep outside Mariupol gets slant column inches, and neither does life in the ATO – the death toll for May is already rising. The now 1.2m refugees flounder without proper state support, nor much interest in the West. Ukraine's economy has hit rock -bottom under the stress of conflict, annexation and years of mismanagement.
Against a backdrop of 'Ukraine fatigue' for Western audiences, the four-day festival Documenting Ukraine (14-17 May 2015) aimed to place Ukraine squarely on the agenda through a programme of documentary cinema, theatre and debate.
