Chris Alexander: Russian propaganda should have no place at TIFF

Anastasia Trofimova's documentary, 'Russians at War,' is part of Moscow's latest attempt to peddle disinformation to western audiences

Published Sep 12, 2024  •  5 minute read

Filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova attends the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 5. Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI/AFP

Filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova’s controversial new documentary, “Russians at War,” which made its North American debut at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) this week, should be seen for what it is: Moscow’s latest attempt to skirt sanctions and influence western audiences with a sanitized view of its devastating war in Ukraine.

This is nothing new. In the century since radio and television emerged, all dictators have relied on propaganda. Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin had Pravda and TASS. For Mao Zedong, it was the People’s Daily and China Central Television. Adolf Hitler, of course, had an entire menagerie of shameless propagandists under Joseph Goebbels, including filmmakers like Leni Riefenstahl.

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At the start of the internet age, propaganda seemed to stumble. Privately owned and arms-length public media were briefly triumphant, as independent journalists shaped global opinion. In response, many authoritarian regimes — including China, Iran and Qatar — reasserted control over information being spread online and over the airwaves.

In this century, however, Russia has emerged as arguably the world leader in disinformation, information warfare and influence operations. The Kremlin’s main propaganda vehicle with global reach, launched in 2005 by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s then-press attache and his former media minister, is Russia Today (RT).

In 2015, the former media minister was found dead in Washington, D.C., a victim of blunt-force injuries. He had reportedly been scheduled to meet the next day with Department of Justice officials about the inner workings of RT. (The less voluble former press attache is now first deputy chief of staff of the presidential executive office.)

Ukraine banned RT in 2014, when Russia first invaded. And following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, RT was sanctioned by Canada and many other western countries.

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In addition, RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, has been personally sanctioned for, as the Ukrainian criminal case against her puts it, “public calls for the mass murder of Ukrainian children” and the “genocide of Ukrainians.”

The International Federation for Human Rights is recommending that Simonyan be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court for the “crime against humanity of persecution against Ukrainians in the form of hate speech.”

With RT’s main channels to reach western audiences blocked, Russia’s information warriors are now testing out new strategies. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two RT employees for funding pro-Moscow influencers in the United States.

Russia’s propaganda efforts remain far-reaching and well-funded, even though leading Russian propagandists are starting to face accountability and indictments. Canada, however, remains a laggard on these issues.

This is where Anastasia Trofimova comes in.

Trofimova made 13 films for RT Documentary (RTD). Her credits on the RTD website were scrubbed just before her latest film debuted at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month (a cached version still lists all 13 RTD-affiliated films).

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In an interview with the Globe and Mail, Trofimova downplayed RTD, calling it a “sister channel” of the sanctioned RT. But RTD is integral to Moscow’s aggressive agenda. It hosted a war propaganda film festival, called RT.Doc: Time of Our Heroes, on the anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, and held similar events in at least seven other Russian cities and Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine.

To make her most recent film, Trofimova spent seven months embedded with Russian forces, including in areas of Ukraine invaded and illegally occupied by Moscow’s army.

The result is a film that is hopelessly one-sided, giving voice only to the foot soldiers of Russian aggression. Needless to say, at a time when many allied democracies are straining to ensure Ukraine defeats this invasion, and to prosecute Russians for kidnapping Ukrainian children and Russia itself for violations of international law, Trofimova’s claim that she hadn’t witnessed any war crimes has generated widespread outrage.

Shockingly, her film, a Canada-France co-production, received public funding from the Canada Media Fund and TVO Media Education Group, an Ontario Crown corporation. It premiered at TIFF on Tuesday, and is scheduled to be screened three more times this week.

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The Ukrainian government, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and many others believe TIFF should cancel the screenings for at least three reasons.

First, Trofimova is not an independent voice. Ekaterina Yakovleva, a producer of Moscow’s war propaganda festival and head of RTD, is credited in several of her films. And Trofimova was employed for over six years during Russia’s illegal occupation of Ukraine by RTD, Moscow’s main propaganda documentary producer — a fact conveniently omitted from her online biography for TIFF.

Second, it’s highly unlikely that Trofimova was ever free to go “anywhere and everywhere,” as she has claimed: her movements likely would have been carefully vetted by military intelligence (GRU), security services (FSB) and other Russian agents of repression.

Finally, her film is transparently part of RT’s latest elaborate effort to circumvent sanctions by presenting a “Russian perspective” at film festivals that whitewashes the country’s war of aggression against Ukraine and its people.

Today’s film festivals should heed the lessons of history.

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Founded in 1932 by a group that included an avid fascist who had been finance minister to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, the Venice Film Festival handed out a Coppa Mussolini award in the late 1930s and early ’40s. It also screened works by Riefenstahl, the Nazi propagandist, as well as the anti-Polish Nazi propaganda film “Heimkehr.”

In an insensitive and ill-informed statement this week, TIFF claimed Trofimova’s film “was made without the knowledge or participation of any Russian government agencies.” Yet given that Trofimova was closely associated with a Russian state agency for six years and surely needed the full permission of Russia’s most repressive state organs to shoot it, TIFF’s statement shows a remarkable lack of understanding of the realities of this war.

By bringing the “perspectives” of today’s totalitarian Russia to our theatres, festival organizers are endangering freedom of speech, putting TIFF on the wrong side of history and alienating Ukrainians, whose very lives depend on the western support that Russia is trying to undermine.

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After an equally ham-fisted initial statement, TVO has done the right thing: its board has decided it will no longer support or air the film.

Russian propaganda should have no place on Canada’s stages or screens. The film’s other sponsors should disavow “Russians at War” and apologize to the Government of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and Canadians for their awful mistake. And TIFF should cancel the remaining screenings.

National Post

Chris Alexander is Canada’s former ambassador to Afghanistan and minister of immigration.

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