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"I haven’t yet been back in Ukraine since the
war started but of course I intend to go there, and I intend to
make a film, about those atrocities that are taking place at the
moment," the director, who lives in Lithuania, told Reuters in
an interview.
Russia is heading into the fourth month of its invasion of
Ukraine, which it calls a "special operation." The fighting has
killed thousands, uprooted millions and reduced Ukrainian cities
to rubble.
Loznitsa has presented eight times at Cannes, and his film "In
the Fog," competed for the festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or,
in 2012.
"The Natural History of Destruction," which is based on a book
of the same name by W.G. Sebald, uses archival footage to
examine the Allied bombing of Germany in World War Two.
Moral questions around the targeting and demoralizing of
civilian populations in that campaign have not been resolved and
are relevant in Ukraine today, Loznitsa said.
“Lessons that had to be learned after the Second World War have
never actually been learned," he said.
On a topic that has created buzz at Cannes, Loznitsa defended
his opposition to boycotting Russian filmmakers.
"Culture in general, by definition, opposes war — it is
something that is absolutely against any war," he said, echoing
exiled Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov who last week also
spoke against boycotting Russian culture.
Serebrennikov has criticised the invasion of Ukraine and his
film "Tchaikovsky's Wife" is the only Russian entry in the
festival.
The Cannes festival banned official Russian delegations. But
Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk panned its move to
include a Russian director.
(Reporting by Mindy Burrows; Additional reporting and writing by
Mimosa Spencer; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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