Notes of a True Criminal

The ongoing war and the stubborn hope for its end have brought Alexander Rodnyansky back to the director’s chair. Although the focus is on present-day Russia’s invasion, the film’s distinctive perspective places Ukraine’s struggle for freedom within a broader, transgenerational continuum.
Rodnyansky weaves together footage shot over decades, his own and that of others, with mobile phone videos recorded at the current front lines. The camera does not linger on decisive battles, but instead dwells on abandoned cities and individual fates shaped, directly and indirectly, by events at the front. Prisoners of war on both sides try to comfort their mothers, while lovers separated by the conflict ease their longing through message threads. The image shifts between past and present.
Reaching back as far as the First World War, the perspective merges events into a single flow, making the movement feel inevitable and eternal: killing, suffering, and revenge locked in an endless cycle. The context of horror is revealed through personal stories and the rawness of pivotal moments. How fear drives a man in his early twenties to shoot an elderly stranger; how one becomes complicit in atrocities simply because of language skills.
These historical leaps also tell the story of the director’s own family. By including his grandparents, parents, and son in the film, Rodnyansky shows how the horrors of war strike every generation in turn.

Minna Saarinen (translated by Anni Rossi)