Ukrainian director Roman Liubyi was in a hotel room in London in February last year when the Russian invasion of his homeland began. At the time, he was working on a theatre show with the Belarus Free Theatre at the Barbican Theatre. His wife and daughter were back in Kyiv. The filmmaker quickly returned to Ukraine.
By then, he was already well into making his new film Iron Butterflies (a premiere in the World Documentary Cinema Competition in Sundance this week and sold internationally by Rise And Shine World Sales). This is his second feature after 2020’s War Note (which collated personal videos from the phones and cameras of Ukrainian soldiers fighting against Russia).
The subject of the film is the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in July 2014 in eastern Ukraine – an atrocity that resulted in the deaths of almost 300 people. The Russians were responsible but have done everything they can to cover their tracks and shift the blame.
“One of the central goals from the very beginning was [to show] the Russian media activity round it [the tragedy],” the director said of his determination to look at how the Russian propaganda “machine” works.
There is poignant footage at the end of the film showing refugees, including children, fleeing from the Kyiv suburbs after last year’s invasion. The point the documentary is making is obvious. If the Russians can get away with shooting down a civilian aircraft without being brought to justice, they can get away with anything. The failure to hold them properly to account for what was an obvious war crime emboldened them to behave yet more recklessly. There was a trial, which the documentary covers, and guilty verdicts were reached, but the perpetrators were far away in Russia and haven’t been made to pay for their actions.
Liubyi doesn’t remember how he first heard about the MH17 crash but he was convinced that it would end the war. The world, he was sure, simply wouldn’t accept the Russians committing mass murder. In the event, “almost nothing happened” and Putin’s regime felt free to carry on killing.
The storytelling idea behind Iron Butterflies was to take “something broken into pieces and put it together.”
The documentary is dedicated to victims of the Russian-Ukrainian war – and the director includes the passengers aboard Flight MH-17 among their number.
Several leading Aids researchers en route to an international conference in Australia died in the air crash. Liubyi highlights their deaths to show that the war doesn’t have borders. “Anyone could become a victim.”
The film was made through Babylon 13, the collective set up by Ukrainian filmmakers after Maidan and the 2013 ‘Revolution of Dignity’. “I think it’s a very interesting organism, a bit anarchic,” the director says of the activist organisation which continues to grow.
Iron Butterflies isn’t the typical investigative documentary. It includes dance sequences, dramatised elements and animation alongside footage of the crash site and clips from Russian TV shows. Alongside the polemics, there are moments of lyricism.
“I think that is just the way how Ukrainians are making films. We have a kind of school of Ukrainian poetic cinema,” Liubyi reflects. He adds that he doesn’t need “to reach for the words” when he is using dance.
Some of the Russian propaganda techniques shown in the doc are very sophisticated. They have scientists, military experts and media commentators wilfully distorting the truth.
“In the modern world, you have to use critical thinking,” Liubyi says of the many Russian citizens who seem to be taken in by the falsified and misleading news reports.
He believes that Russian culture and the Russian war machine are now completely interwoven. This became obvious after the bombing of the theatre in Mariupol which was being used as a shelter by civilians. Having destroyed the original building, the Russians are now redeveloping the area and hanging up printed portraits of Russian writers like Pushkin and Dostoevsky.
Early on, the documentary received funding from the Ukrainian state film agency. German outfit Trimafilm came on board as a co-producer.
The film was edited between Kyiv, where Liubyi is based, and Munich. The director was also working in air reconnaissance management, helping drones collect information as part of the war effort.
After the full-scale invasion began, he began to restructure the documentary. Now, the film stands as a warning about the consequences off doing nothing in the face of Russian aggression.
Having made two projects about the Ukrainian war, the director is making an animated feature, Unholy Power, based on an old Ukrainian book from the 1920s. “It’s Ukrainian folklore where humankind are really tricky and dangerous creatures.” The project will use stop motion, puppets and drawing, “a whole ocean of different techniques.”
Liubyi is speaking from a hotel room in Sundance. “It’s absolutely surreal. I feel I came from the opposite side of reality,” he says of the contrast between a ski resort like Park City, Utah, during the film festival and war-torn Ukraine, where he has recently been filming on the front line. “But as a representative of the Ukrainian people, I really want to thank the international society and the US for the help in our fight. It is precious,” he declares. Iron Butterflies has also been selected for Berlinale Panorama.
