The first deep thump in Mariupopolis 2 still sounds like thunder, rumbling in the distance. We see a man in a half-darkened hallway. The next impact sounds a bit closer. Then another blow, even harder. A dog starts barking.
Living as stragglers in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, this war documentary added at the last minute to the selection of the Cannes Film Festival, is dominated by, among other things, being forced to get used to the incessant drone of Russian missile strikes.
A smoking man, filmed up close, cringes during another strike, squinting his eyes. Another suspects an impending Russian direct hit and yells: Get out! The cameraman rushes in. The dog runs out in the opposite direction, in a valiant effort to protect his people.
The display of Mariupopolis 2 is news, in Cannes. Lithuanian documentary maker and anthropologist Mantas Kvedaravicius (45) had not yet finished his work when he was arrested by the Russians two months ago. kidnapped and murdered, during his attempt to leave the city safely. His Ukrainian fiancée, 29-year-old Hanna Bilbrova, with whom he worked on the documentary in Mariupol from February, found his body on the street two days after his disappearance. She managed to return to Lithuania and did the impossible: she edited the already shot, but unfinished material into a presentable version.
There was no doubt in Cannes when they learned about Bilbrova’s plan. ‘We were determined to show this documentary’, says festival director Thierry Frémaux before the first screening. He points to the ‘Fuck Putin’ pin he is wearing this festival day. In Cannes people are turning their backs on the Russian invasion – and today even more so. “I think everyone supports this message, except Putin.” Bilbrova is also present and addresses the audience, with a broken voice. She is grateful that the festival honors her husband as the filmmaker and anthropologist he was.
The documentary shows how quickly habituation sets in during daily life in a war city. Watch a man try to loosen a car tire, ignoring the impacts in the distance. How a man laughs softly after the umpteenth thump at the startle response of another. Like: you know what’s happening here, you idiot! How a conversation between two women is characterized by the ultimate perspective: ‘It’s good that the sun is shining at least.’
These are images that do not make the news, because they do not show manageable or unambiguous events. City overviews, drawn by plumes of black smoke, have been held for a long time, which outline the perspective of those left behind. We see people sweeping together glass, settled dust and pieces of wood to make the street more or less presentable, even if the roads are hardly used anymore. In a backyard full of rubble and rubbish, a large stockpot simmers on a hastily built of loose bricks.
Politics remains a long way off – although it should be noted that not everything people say in front of the camera is subtitled. The closest is the man who bemoans the ‘mess’ that several governments have made of his country. Again and again a fairer policy was promised, but see where it has taken them. Perhaps, he suggests, Ukraine doesn’t need a fair government for a while?
Kvedaravicius’ film style is no different from its predecessor Mariupolis from 2016, in which he sketches the lives of the inhabitants of Mariupol as pro-Russian separatists increasingly manifest themselves in the region. But people are still open-minded, in 2016. There is laughter and dancing in the theater. The difference: in this second part, almost all the people have disappeared. The stragglers are in survival mode. The theater is empty.
