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Intercepted

November 22, 2024 @ 6:00 pm

Presented in partnership with the Museum of International Folk Art, in conjunction with the exhibition Amidst Cries from the Rubble: Art of Loss and Resilience from Ukraine (on display at MOIFA June 23, 2024 – April 20, 2025).

ONE NIGHT ONLY! FREE TO ATTEND!

Sound and image stare each other in the face as Intercepted contrasts quiet compositions of everyday life of Ukrainians since the full-scale invasion with intercepted phone conversations between Russian soldiers and their families.

Ukrainian intelligence services have intercepted thousands of phone calls Russian soldiers made from the battlefield in Ukraine to their families and friends in Russia, painting a stark picture of the cruelty of war in a dizzying emotional tension. Juxtaposed with images of the destruction caused by the invasion and the day-to-day life of the Ukrainian people who resist and rebuild, the voices of the Russian soldiers – ranging from being filled with heroic illusions to complete disappointment and loss of reason, from looting to committing more horrible war crimes, from propaganda to doubt and disillusionment – expose the whole scope of the dehumanizing power of war and imperialist nature of the Russian aggression.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT: When the Russian full-scale invasion started, I was in Ukraine and happened to be working as a local producer with Al Jazeera English. This work allowed me to access many places in different Ukrainian regions where I witnessed Russian war crimes. At night after my work, I developed a habit of listening to the “intercepts”: intercepted phone calls of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine calling their families back home that were obtained and publicly released by the Ukraine’s security services. The discrepancy between the brutal reality that I was living during the day and the things I was hearing at night was shocking. In the intercepts, the Russians sounded human. That was the most painful thing to accept: Why do humans do such inhumane things? This question has brought me to the film, which is based on a simple juxtaposition of two realities trying to understand the full complexity of the “Russian order”, to comprehend what kind of thinking is behind the invasion.

Total Runtime of film: 93 mins

Free

“Terrific… An austere and harrowing chronicle of life, death and indifference… One of the strongest movies in [New Directors/New Films].” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times


“Formally audacious… The movie’s stylistic tension, between images of life being lived (or having been lived), and disembodied voices portending death, connects the dots between ideology and action, between propaganda and bloodshed… ” – Siddhant Adlakha, IndieWire


“Intercepted offers a spare psychological portrait of soldiers at war. Gleaned directly from their conversations, this is an honest depiction of how empathy disappears and malice takes over.” – Murtada Elfadl, Variety


“This daring collision of image and sound is haunting in its own way, presenting intimate conversations which often reveal trace glimpses of humanity in soldiers who otherwise have behaved monstrously.” -Tim Grierson, Screen Daily


“Intercepted is essential viewing, a necessary confrontation with the worst that human beings are capable of.” – Nelson Kim, Filmmaker Magazine


“A stark, uncompromising documentary that shows how life must go on in Ukraine.” – Jordan Raup, The Film Stage


“It’s worth highlighting the cinematic distinction, and most importantly, the visual and pictorial intelligence, of what we see. It chimes with a trend in depictions of wars and atrocities to show them – if that at all – in a deferred, oblique manner: it’s the finger on the trigger, and then the dissipating smoke,
with the explosion itself erased” – David Katz, Cineuropa


“Intercepted is a stark reminder of the soul-sucking effect of war, sapping the last bit of humanity from people who perhaps, by and large, indeed were not like this” – Marc van de Klashorst, International Cinephile Society


“A tragically visceral, yet poetic, audiovisual tapestry of the ongoing conflict… A haunting image of human barbarity.” – Mick Gaw, Washington Square News

“More palatable than the bloody Oscar-winner 20 Days in Mariupol, though it is only slightly less emotionally harrowing… Closer in style to The Zone of Interest, given its perspective from the enemy’s side, and especially in its use of sound.” – Matthew Delman, Hammer To Nail

“The silence between the calls serves as a space for the horror of them to fully take shape in the viewers’ mind… Karpovych’s film shares some DNA with The Zone Of Interest, in its spare and somber highlighting of the banality of evil.” – Amber Wilkinson, Eye For Film


“The silences during some of these exchanges speak volumes in a movie that — as these private talks play over images of ruined lives — underscores the horrific intimacy of war. “Intercepted” is yet another crucial eyewitness document of the Russia-Ukraine war, one that makes the personal stakes painfully vivid.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

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