Venice Film Festival extends solidarity with Ukraine, to screen war movie 'Reflection'

The Venice Film Festival has announced a free screening of a film based on the Russia-Ukraine conflict to express solidarity with the people of Ukraine amid the ongoing war between the two countries. The festival will screen the movie Reflection, which was based on the 2014 war in Ukraine's Donbass region, over the next week.  

This was amid the decision of the organisers of the Cannes Film Festival to not welcome Russian delegations for the event scheduled to take place later this year.   

Venice Film Festival to arrange screenings of war film 'Reflection'

The Venice International Film Festival of La Biennale di Venezia, as per a report on AP, expressed its solidarity with the filmmakers and people of Ukraine with this decision.

Three free screenings of the movie Reflection will be held at the theatres named Troisi in Rome, Anteo Palazzo del Cinema in Milan and the Circuito Cinema of the City of Venice. The move was in collaboration with the Italian distributor Wanted. The screenings are scheduled to be held on March 7 at 7.10 PM, March 9 AT 8 PM and March 10 at 9.30 PM respectively. 

The film had been presented at the 2021 edition of the event.

The plot of the movie revolved around Russian military troops capturing a surgeon Serhiy, played by Roman Lutskiy, from Ukraine, amid the conflict in Donbass in 2014. He gets imprisoned and witnesses violence and humiliation towards prisoners of war during his jail stay. The story was about the battles he faces in trying to adapt to day-to-day after the conclusion of his prison term, as he attempts to then patch equations with his ex-wife and daughter.   

The movie has been directed, written and edited by Valentyn Vasjanovych and he was also one of the producers of the movie. The film was being scheduled for a theatrical release this year. His previous movie Atlantis in 2019 was also themed around the war, depicting a post-apocalyptic premise where Eastern Ukraine had become a desert after the war.

The plot was about a journey of a solider suffering from PTSD dealing with the reality of recovering mortal remains from the war zone. The film had been honoured with the Best Film award in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival in 2019.