TRENCHES (TRANCHÉES)
Tuesday, October 11 – Truffaut Theater – 1:15pm
(Screening ends at 2:45 pm)
DOCUMENTARY
Presented in Association with:
Films Boutique
North American Premiere | France | 2022 | Documentary | 85 min | In Ukrainian with English subtitles
Directed by: Loup Bureau
Written by: Loup Bureau
Produced by: Caroline Nataf, Bruno Nahon, Thomas Morvan (Unité)
Cinematography: Loup Bureau
Film Editing: Léo Gatelier, Catherine Catela
Original Score: Gustave Rudman
International Sales: Films Boutique
Months before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in February of this year, war correspondent Loup Bureau‘s quietly brooding debut feature premiered at last year’s Venice Film Festival. The film’s elegiac score, mostly black-and-white footage, and stark imagery frame the backstory to that conflict, which actually began back in 2014, with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas. However, Trenches is less a history lesson than an immersion into the unbearably dull reality of ordinary ground forces fighting a down-and-dirty war… and continually digging, digging, digging those endlessly meandering trench shelters with pick-axes, shovels and their own bare hands. Albeit, “shelters” that offer little protection to the soldiers once enemy bullets and bombs begin to rain over their heads. Yet it’s the physicality of their long days that lingers with us, as this unit of 300 men — and one woman — share their innermost thoughts and endlessly wait for this heartbreaking war-without-end to finally be over.
Loup Bureau is a French journalist and former Cairo-based correspondent for French television, including the channel TV5 Monde. Bureau’s interest in Ukraine was sparked by the 2013-14 Maidan Revolution. In 2016, he began to cover the war in Donbas and was arrested by Turkish authorities, while covering Kurdish fighters in Syria in 2017. He subsequently spent 52 days in prison before being released. In 2019, Bureau published the book, Chroniques d’un prisonnier: Cinquante-deux jours dans une prison turque. Trenches, his very first film, premiered out of competition at the 2021 Venice Film Festival.
