Insightful eavesdropping

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This article was published 31/03/2025 (244 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘Russian soldiers made thousands of calls from the battlefield in Ukraine to their families at home. The Ukrainian special services were listening in,” says a message at the beginning of the film, Intercepted.

Written and directed by Ukrainian-Canadian filmmaker Oksana Karpovych, this unsettling and powerful 90-minute documentary will be screened Tuesday at the University of Manitoba.

The free public event is sponsored by the university’s Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies and will include a discussion following the film.

“We felt that this timely, moving and thought-provoking documentary depicts, via Ukrainian security service wiretaps, real conditions faced by Russian soldiers fighting in the occupied territories of Ukraine,” said professor Orest Cap, acting co-ordinator of the centre, of the screening via email.

Intercepted includes recordings of phone calls made by Russian soldiers and shared online by Ukrainian military personnel between March and November 2022. The calls paint a bleak image of the brutality of the war.

The snippets of conversation are played over shell-pocked schools, houses and other civilian structures that have been destroyed by Russian military strikes following the country’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

“We are coming to a place with a lot of civilians,” says a male voice, speaking through a crackly connection, to his wife in Russia. “We were given the order to kill everyone we see.”

Another soldier: “I’m telling you. We kill people here, mom.”

Mother: “Well, are you sure these are people? These are not people.”

His response: “It’s not clear what we’re liberating there, right?”

Ukrainian voices are not heard, but we see Ukrainian citizens rebuilding their homes and daily lives, and children playing despite the devastation caused by the invasion.

The idea for Intercepted came while Karpovych, who did not respond to a Free Press interview request, was working in Ukraine as a producer for Al Jazeera English.

“This work allowed me to access many places in different Ukrainian regions where I witnessed Russian war crimes. At night after my work, I developed a habit of listening to the ‘intercepts,’” she writes in her director statement.

“The discrepancy between the brutal reality that I was living during the day and the things I was hearing at night was shocking. That was the most painful thing to accept: Why do humans do such inhumane things? This question has brought me to the film, which is based on a simple juxtaposition of two realities trying to understand the full complexity of the ‘Russian order,’ to comprehend what kind of thinking is behind the invasion.”

This film exposes the extent of “the dehumanizing power of war,” as George Orwell once said, and the nature of Russia’s aggression.

It’s also layered with a haunting and unconventional musical score and shots of Ukraine’s stunning and verdant countryside.

Intercepted is a France-Canada-Ukraine co-production and won the Grand Prize for National Feature at the 2024 Montreal International Documentary Festival and has been nominated for a 2025 Gotham Award for Best Documentary.

It has been selected for over 80 festivals worldwide and recognized by Docudays UA’s International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.

fparts@freepress.mb.ca