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Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Russians At War' Director & Producer Talk Backlash & Direct-To-Audience Release: 'The Best Counter To The Protests & Hate Is For People To See The Film'
Director Anastasia Trofimova and producer Cornelia Principe are launching a direct-to-audience release this week of the former's controversial documentary Russians at War, in a bid to get it seen after a year of protests and cancellations. The two-hour work gives sobering insight into the futility and carnage of armed conflict through the lives of Russia-aligned soldiers on the front of the country's unprovoked war against Ukraine, with whom Trofimova embedded over a period of seven months. More from Deadline Idris Elba's 'Dust To Dreams' Starring Seal Set To Premiere In TIFF Shorts + Full Lineup TIFF Primetime Lineup: 'The Lowdown', 'Wayward' & 'Black Rabbit' Set To Premiere in Toronto's Series Showcase 'Damned If You Do' Trailer: Gianni Di Gregorio's Comedic Reflection On Love & Family Closes Venice's Giornate Degli Autori After an incident-free world premiere at the Venice Film Festival last year, the doc met with protests in Canada from pro-Ukraine groups ahead of its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), with the former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, who is of Ukrainian descent, leading the charge. The protestors accused the film of being Russian propaganda – in a war of Russia's instigation in which more than 13,500 Ukrainian civilians and between 60,000 to 100,000 military personal have been killed and another 10 million people have been displaced – although none of them had seen the film at that point. At least 250,000 Russian troops have died in the conflict. TIFF canceled the festival screening, instead playing the film in the TIFF Lightbox Theatre on the first Tuesday after its 2024 edition ended, using security staff who were still on site to ensure the safety of Trofimova, her producers and the spectators in the room. 'Anastasia had her very own security detail. I had someone following me around even when I went to the bathroom. When we were on stage for the Q&A, there was a line of security in front of us. People who came had to be security scanned. It was a quite a production, but the festival had to make sure everybody was safe,' recounts Principe. The Oscar-nominated Canadian producer (To Kill A Tiger) produced the documentary under her Raja Pictures banner with Sally Blake and Philippe Levasseur at Paris-based Capa Presse. The fallout would continue throughout the year with Athens and Zurich among festivals which pulled the film due to protests and security concerns. Principe also reveals that the International Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) rescinded an invitation issued in August 2024 for its Best of Fests sidebar saying they could not create a constructive dialog around the work. 'That was surprising,' she says of the disinvite, which occurred under the radar before the festival unveiled its lineup. In the meantime, the push back has only strengthened the film team's resolve to get the film seen, with the producers opting for a direct-to-audience strategy. 'The best counter to the protests and the anger is for people to see the film,' says Principe. '99% of the protests came from people who hadn't seen the film… I totally agree that peaceful protest is a great and constructive way to voice one's opinion, but it would be nice also to see the film.' Principe cites documentaries such as Brett Story and Stephen Maing's Union, following Amazon workers as they attempt to unionize, and Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, which also released direct-to-audience, as inspirations for going down the self-distribution route. 'For films that are potentially controversial for some communities or some groups or corporations, going direct-to-audience seems to be the way to go,' says Principe. 'Getting it out there as far and wide as possible was really our plan and it seemed more and more after things happened in Canada and TIFF, that doing it ourselves was the way to go.' Working with the direct-to-audience platform of tech entertainment company Gathr, the producers have created the website, where spectators will be able to gain paid access to the film from August 12. 'It took months and months to get our website together. It's a very fulsome website with lots of content to give people background on the making of the film, frequently asked questions, criticisms that we address, all that is there,' says Principe. The release is worldwide but excludes Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, with the production planning to make it available in those territories for free at a later date. 'That's going to be a separate release because it will be free and we need to make sure that it can actually be accessed in Russia, says Principe. An experienced TV producer and documentarian, who has also worked in Syria and Iraq, Trofimova knew the film would receive pushback from some quarters for the human light in which it portrayed the Russia-aligned soldiers but was not prepared for the full-out backlash it sparked as it embarked on its festival tour last year. 'I think it was easier to go to the front and to be in the war than to deal with what happened afterwards because it was so unexpected. The documentary community has been very supportive overall and very understanding, but what was a shock to me is, how easy it is to be accused of something that people say you did, not that you actually did or said yourself,' she says. 'Most of the people who have been attacking this film, and the most vicious attacks, of course, have been happening online, have not seen the film… In Toronto, where we were the top news story for at least a week, journalists asked the protesters, 'Have you seen the film?' They would reply, 'No, we have not, and we refuse to.' What was surprising for me was, why this anger directed at the film? Why this anger directed at me? Because it's like I became their personal enemy, or the film became their personal enemy.' The fallout has also raised questions for Trofimova around the power of coordinated deplatforming campaigns. 'It has been quite interesting to realize how easy it is for anyone in the documentary community to be attacked and silenced by some sort of interest group, because it didn't take that much to be honest. A lot of the stuff is online. It's quite organized. There's been quite a coordinated defamation deplatforming campaign against this film,' she says. 'It's left quite a bit of damage. I'm not talking about our emotional state, but rather the fact that it started off so well. It was receiving invitations from the world's top festivals and the attacks on it made it so much more difficult for people to program it and to see it. That was the shocking thing.' She also questions the implications of what happened to her for other documentarians who want to tackle controversial and complex topics in the future 'It made me wonder how do we make complex films? It's a question for anyone who wants to take on a big, controversial problem in the world, and we have a lot of them. Now more than ever, documentaries have this huge responsibility to try to explain, to tackle them, to analyze them, to get in there. What do we have to be prepared for as filmmakers next time we go in?,' she says. Trofimova is not certain it is safe for her return to Russia any time soon given the unflattering light in which Russians at War portrays conditions at the front for the country's soldiers, but she hopes to able to return one day to continue a personal mission to capture Russian stories that are told neither in the local media, or internationally. 'The thing about war documentaries is that if you're just faithfully observing and recording this reality, you cannot make anything but an anti -war film, because the longer you stay and the longer you see the futility and how people who are very dear to someone back home, they're just gone. And the same thing goes for both sides… it becomes very, very tragic.' Principe notes how this time last year, she and Trofimova were iin Paris finishing post-production on the work ahead of the Venice premiere. 'A year ago, we were looking forward to Venice. A year later, we're looking forward to releasing the film online, so that people can see it and judge for themselves,' she says. 'They don't have to love the film. They have to don't agree with the film, but watch it and then, we'd love to hear what you think.' Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds A Full Timeline Of Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni's 'It Ends With Us' Feud In Court, Online & In The Media 'The Boys' Season 5: Everything We Know So Far
USA Today
9 hours ago
- USA Today
Trump-Putin summit spotlights Alaska's strategic importance, vulnerability
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson is a prime midway rest stop for dignitaries on the route from Washington to eastern Asia. WASHINGTON − The summit meeting between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will focus on ending Putin's war in Ukraine, with Alaska's awesome beauty and vulnerabilities as its backdrop. The two world leaders will meet at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, the post that crowns Anchorage to its south. It's an installation that teems with airmen and soldiers − plenty of moose and bears, too, befitting its location on the edge of Alaska's vast stretches of black spruce-fringed wilderness. Cold, dark and snowy in the winter, the base gets near round-the-clock sun at summer's peak. It's a prime midway rest stop for dignitaries, like presidents and cabinet secretaries, on the route from Washington to eastern Asia. The flight from the East Coast to the southern coast of Alaska takes roughly eight hours, about the limit for air crews before mandated rest, and a convenient, secure location to refuel. Long before air travel and a superpower summit, U.S. and Russian leaders haggled over Alaska. In 1867, Secretary of State William Seward secretly negotiated with Russian officials to buy the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million. Derided at the time as Seward's Folly, the deal worked out for the Americans. Alaska – its people, awesome landscape and enormous natural resources – joined the union in 1959. Before statehood, the Army established the base that would become Elmendorf-Richardson in 1940 during the runup to World War II. Since then, soldiers and airmen along with smaller contingents from the Navy and Marine Corps have called the base home. In all, the joint base hosts about 30,000 service members, their family members and civilian employees. Its key location – near Russia and close to Arctic resources eyed by China – has made Elmendorf-Richardson and other Alaskan military installations increasingly valuable to the Pentagon. More personnel and money have been streaming into Alaska in recent years to bolster northern defenses. The base takes part in some of the military's most intricate annual war games, featuring sophisticated weapons like the F-22 fighter. Alaska is the land of superlatives. The state is more than twice the size of Texas; its 46,000 miles of shoreline are more than the lower 48 states combined; Denali's snow-capped peak towers over the interior at more than 20,000 feet. Brown and black bears, moose and wolves, roam tundra and black spruce forests. Temperatures routinely drop to 50 degrees below zero in the interior, where Fort Wainwright sits on the edge of Fairbanks. Dim sunlight smudges skies for only a few hours in the depth of winter. Cabin fever can be very real. In the summer, it truly is the Land of the Midnight Sun. Perpetual daylight has its downside, disrupting sleep, leading to irritability – and worse. Alaska routinely ranks among the nation's leaders in alcohol abuse and suicide. In recent years, Alaska's strategic, remote location has exposed its vulnerabilities. Suicide among soldiers spiked to alarming levels. Reporting by USA TODAY revealed a shortage of mental personnel to help them. The Army and Congress intervened, dispatching dozens of counselors and spending millions to improve living conditions for troops there. Suicide rates declined. Efforts by Chinese spies to gain access to Alaskan bases hasn't, however, USA TODAY has reported. The bases contain some of the military's top-end weaponry, sophisticated radars to track potential attacks on the homeland and missiles to intercept them. Russia, too, regularly probes America's northern flank. As recently as July, 22 the North American Aerospace Defense Command detected Russian warplanes operating in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. When aircraft enter the zone, they must be identified for national security purposes. The Russian planes remained in international airspace, a tactic they employ regularly. Mildly provocative, the flights are noted by NORAD but not considered a threat. Meanwhile, global warming has thawed permafrost beneath runways and rising water levels have damaged coastal facilities requiring remediation costing tens of millions of dollars. A skeptic of climate change, Trump could view for himself its effects, including cemeteries eroded by rising sea levels disgorging coffins of flu and smallpox victims from more than a century ago. The potential release of ancient pathogens from melting permafrost has captured the Pentagon's attention, too. Alas, Alaska may have been Putin's last, best choice for a summit. His brutal, unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine has made him an international pariah. Denied entry into Europe, he and Trump could not repeat their summit in Helsinki, the capital of Finland that is now a member of NATO − due mainly to the invasion. Luckily for Putin and Trump, Anchorage is a delightful city, cool in midsummer and far from the death and destruction Putin he has wrought in Ukraine.
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
MAGA queens Laura Loomer & Marjorie Taylor Greene go nuclear on one another in brutal war of words
MAGA firebrand and racist conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and Trump devotee Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's years-long fight has picked up again, but this time the two women are going full scorched earth while the internet sits back and watches. It's hard to tell when the women's feud actually began, especially since they mostly fight on X (formerly Twitter) and are both prolific posters, but while they share a love of President Donald Trump and his MAGA ideology, their battle of wills quickly turned nasty. After Loomer posted about what a disgrace it was that the Army presented a Medal of Honor to Retired U.S. Army Capt. Florent Groberg instead of 'a Republican and US born soldier,' Greene called her out for having 'ZERO respect or reverence for even the most heroic people in America.' At some point, Loomer blocked Greene on X, who posted a screenshot of the block notification, and then the gloves came off, and in classic Loomer style, she started flooding the social media site with post after post calling out Greene. But instead of well-reasoned critiques, the barbs were decidedly nasty and overwhelmingly misogynistic. Loomer accused Greene of funneling government money to her own daughter and went full nuclear, calling her a 'Fake Christian Jezebel,' a 'harlot,' a lying fake Christian whore,' 'a white trash hick,' a "loud mouthed bitch,' and posted over and over again calling out Greene for her alleged affair. The rant started on Monday, when she posted things like Greene 'ruined her marriage when she got to Congress because she can't keep her mouth or her legs closed,' and wrote that the congresswoman was 'on her knees all night. And it's not for praying.' Loomer didn't stop, also writing, 'How do you call yourself a Christian when you're wearing a cross while getting bent over backwards inside the gym by every man who isn't your husband?' Greene called Loomer out for being 'a coward' and wrote that 'she psychotically turns on everyone' and is "the most unstable person and worst liability to ever walk in the Oval Office.' The hateful back and forth seems to stem from two things: Loomer thinking MTG is a sell-out who doesn't support Trump and who is using her role in Congress to line her own pockets and Greene calling Loomer out for being a MIGA (in case you're not terminally online like these two rivals, that stands for Make Israel Great Again). The two have been arguing about the U.S.'s support of Israel since Loomer is Jewish and an outspoken supporter of Israel, while Greene has broken with the Republican Party and begun referring to the Israeli government's treatment of Palestine as a 'genocide' and has called on the U.S. to stop sending money and arms to the country. Loomer, on the other hand, wants the Trump administration to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests and call anyone speaking out against the Israeli government antisemitic. As of August 13, Loomer is still on the attack, reposting a Mediate article about Greene sending campaign funds to her daughter, writing, 'I don't ever want to hear anyone in the GOP again criticize the left for using campaign funds to pay their kids if Marge gets a pass.' The two women going for the jugular on such a public platform is an odd choice, especially when they have both already blown through so much political capital. Loomer used to have the ear of the president, even accompanying him on the campaign trail before she got pushed aside when her overt racism was exposed, and Greene used to be one of Trump's most ardent supporters, but she's since been condemned by a growing number of Republicans and largely ignored by Trump. Who knows where it will all end, but the fight seems to be continuing on, and people on social media are laughing at how ridiculous it is! This article originally appeared on Pride: MAGA queens Laura Loomer & Marjorie Taylor Greene go nuclear on one another in brutal war of words RELATED Trump-obsessed Laura Loomer seemingly got dumped, is MELTING DOWN & we can't stop CACKLING MAGA queen Laura Loomer eviscerates Elon Musk in epic rant & we're cackling BREAKING: Marjorie Taylor Greene officially urges Trump to commute George Santos's prison sentence
