DMovies - Your platform for thought-provoking cinema

Flight of a Bullet

Suspected separatist arrested by Ukrainian police shortly after bridge in blown open, in single-take documentary at Donbass War - from the Open City Doc Film Fest

This is a single-take film, but nothing like Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002) and Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria (2016). There were no actors, no rehearsals and no preparation of any sort. This is a completely spontaneous documentary. Similar to what would happen if you turned on the camera on your phone and followed those around you for about 80 minutes. Except that this is 2015, in the middle of the Donbass conflict.

The film opens with a black screen populated with the sentence: “Life lasted only while camera was on, so I kept it rolling”. This suggests that the filmmaker’s life was endangered. A bridge has been blown open by separatists, and a heavy lorry has nearly collapsed into the river. It’s unclear whether there were any casualties. A man called Maxim films the dramatic event with his own telephone. A bullet is heard, balaclava-clad policemen demand to see everyone’s papers. They arrest Maxim for interrogation on suspicion of separatism. The filmmaker Beata jumps in the car with the police.

The second half of the film is far less dramatic, as the police reach the conclusion that the man is not engaged in separatism. The interrogation becomes far more friendly, as Maxim provides them with useful strategic and geographic information about the region. He draws a map and diagram on a chalk board hardly discernible to viewers. He is then released and Beata is left to film the young soldiers in the now disbanded military base of Aidar, a voluntary military defense battalion. About a third of the film consists of Beata filming a half-naked soldier having a mundane talk to a friend on the telephone. Not particularly thrilling.

Flight of a Bullet is a marketed as “provocative study of how the violence of conflict permeates into the mundanity of the everyday”. But this is only a study of violence as far as watching strangers talk on the street is a study of mankind. There is limited elicitation technique, little technical wizardry and absolutely no artistic merit. Beata remains behind the camera and hardly speaks, except for a few moments when her motives a questioned and a very creepy sexual proposition, suggesting that she could be raped.

Ultimately, this is a piece of guerrilla filmmaking, and a very random fragment of a very complex conflict. The film is not contextualised at all, so it’s up to viewers to put the pieces together.

Flight of a Bullet + Q&A with the director Beata Bubenec takes place as part of the Open City Documentary Film Festival in London between September 4th and 9th. This is the type of movie that could be fascinating and generate a very thought-provoking debate in the presence of the director, or if you are very familiar with Ukrainian lifestyle and parlance – but almost entirely meaningless otherwise.

The separatist question has not been resolved, and the armed struggle in Donbass is still ongoing to this date. There have been reports that one of the film subjects is now dead, which has raised many eyebrows and brought the accountability of the filmmaker into question.


By Victor Fraga - 28-08-2018

Victor Fraga is a Brazilian born and London-based journalist and filmmaker with more than 20 years of involvement in the cinema industry and beyond. He is an LGBT writer, and describes himself as a di...

DMovies Poll

Are the Oscars dirty enough for DMovies?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

Most Read

Forget Friday the 13th, Paranormal Activity and the [Read More...]
Just a few years back, finding a film [Read More...]
A lot of British people would rather forget [Read More...]
Pigs might fly. And so Brexit might happen. [Read More...]
Sexual diversity is at the very heart of [Read More...]
Films quotes are very powerful not just because [Read More...]

Read More

A Cambodian Spring

Chris Kelly
2018

Victor Fraga - 30-04-2018

People have the power? Documentary follows activists in Cambodia for six years as they fight against forced resettlement and the country's illiberal democracy - now available on BFI Player [Read More...]

Hooligan Sparrow

Nanfu Wang
2016

Petra von Kant - 25-05-2016

Undercover filming is a lifesaver for a group of female human rights activists in China denouncing widespread child abuse and dodging government repression - find out why in this new Chinese documentary [Read More...]

Kinshasa Makambo

Dieudo Hamadi
2018

Victor Fraga - 20-02-2018

Audacious doc registers the rebel struggle against the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo Joseph Kabila, who has been in power for 17 years and still refuses to budge - from Sheffield Doc Fest [Read More...]

Facebook Comment

Website Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *