‘Notes Of A True Criminal’ review: Alexander Rodnyansky explores Ukraine’s plight, past and present

Dirs: Alexander Rodnyansky, Andriy Alferov. US/Ukraine. 2025. 117mins

Ukraine’s precarious current is filtered by way of its tragic previous in Notes Of A True Felony. Filmmaker Alexander Rodnyansky has constructed a private, despairing documentary that mixes footage he shot greater than 30 years in the past with current photographs rising from the imperilled nation since Russia launched its invasion in 2022. The weaving of then and now places Ukraine’s struggles for freedom in a bigger historic context, illustrating the sickening deja vu that happens as one technology after one other lives underneath the thumb of an oppressive occupying power.

A sober method is rigorously balanced with Rodnyansky’s palpable dismay 

This Venice premiere is co-directed by Rodnyansky — a outstanding producer of Oscar-nominated photos by, amongst others, Andrey Zvyagintsev, together with Loveless and Leviathan — and movie critic Andriy Alferov, who co-wrote and co-directed the 2024 Ukrainian narrative characteristic Dissident. There was no scarcity of stellar documentaries concerning the invasion of Ukraine, and future pageant play appears probably for this thought-provoking image that analyses warfare from unconventional angles. 

A gap title card underlines the movie’s private nature, with Rodnyansky noting that the 2022 warfare symbolically started for him when his grownup son Sasha known as him from Rodnyansky’s hometown of Kyiv, letting his father hear the sounds of rockets exploding. Having been labelled a overseas agent by the Russian authorities and sentenced in absentia to greater than eight years in jail final autumn, Rodnyansky ponders Ukraine’s lengthy battle for freedom, the world Sasha can be inheriting, and his household’s deep connection to cinema. (Rodnyansky’s mom, father and grandfather all labored in movie.) Drawing on archival footage and his personal documentaries from the early-to-mid-Nineteen Nineties, he finds parallels between previous atrocities and what he and colleagues have witnessed in modern-day Ukraine.

Rodnyansky, now 64, way back deserted documentary filmmaking to provide different administrators’ photos, however Notes Of A True Felony demonstrates his hanging visible sense. His footage of the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe is shot in smudgy greens and browns, a darkish reminder of the lethal atomic fallout for individuals who lived in Kyiv, solely 90 kilometres away. However Rodnyansky additionally goes additional again, recalling the 1941 Babyn Yar bloodbath, in the course of the time of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, when German police slaughtered roughly 34,000 Jews, together with Rodnyansky’s personal kinfolk, over the course of two days simply outdoors Kyiv. 

Trendy-day warfare footage doesn’t embrace the extraordinary, up-close fight we’ve seen in award-winning movies like 20 Days In Mariupol. As an alternative, Notes Of A True Felony options deserted city centres, startled locals, shaken prisoners of warfare, and separated lovers. As Rodnyansky and Alferov travel between time frames, assisted by editor Nazim Kadri-Zade, Rodnyansky’s sombre voiceover gives the emotional through-line. A riveting sequence involving the 2022 trial of Vadim Shyshymarin, a sergeant of the Russian armed forces accused of killing a civilian, is juxtaposed with Rodnyansky’s 1991 documentary Assembly With Father, during which a lady goes to go to her incarcerated father, who had been sentenced to demise for his half in a mass capturing in Ukraine in 1942. Notes Of A True Felony connects these totally different footage sources to underline how the emotional scars of warfare by no means change — or heal.

One other outstanding voice in Notes Of A True Felony is that of Felix Sobolev, Rodnyansky’s professor and mentor who made documentaries primarily based round scientific experiments. Clips from a number of of his movies are included, essentially the most trenchant being 1971’s Me And The Others, which chronicles a check carried out on kids every served spoonfuls from the identical bowl of porridge — though some sides of the bowl are candy whereas others are salty. As the kids go towards their very own instinctive reactions with the intention to agree with their friends about how the porridge tastes, it’s clear that Rodnyansky and Alferov are suggesting how groupthink generally is a unfavorable affect.

Structured in an episodic, generally educational approach, Notes Of A True Felony invariably has stronger and weaker segments. However the intelligence delivered to bear provides the movie a spirit of inquisitive exploration. All through, a sober method is rigorously balanced with Rodnyansky’s palpable dismay that the really impartial Ukraine he dreamed of within the early Nineteen Nineties remains to be but to emerge.