Film Forum

After the February 2022 invasion, the Security Service of Ukraine released intercepted phone calls from Russian soldiers to their families — sharing their innermost fears, contempt for Ukrainians, and hopes for a swift victory; while blithely detailing atrocities they perpetrate and goods they pillage. In INTERCEPTED, Ukrainian-Canadian filmmaker Oksana Karpovych juxtaposes these intimate conversations with eerie images of deserted, war-torn Ukrainian homes and villages, shot just behind the front lines. Absent graphic imagery, Karpovych evokes a vivid, haunting tableaux of war, and the psychological disconnect between oppressors and the lives they’ve destroyed.

2024     93 MIN.     CANADA / FRANCE / UKRAINE     GRASSHOPPER FILM
IN RUSSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES

Reviews

“Terrific…an austere and harrowing chronicle of life, death and indifference.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“Grade: A. The movie’s stylistic tension, between images of life being lived (or having been lived), and disembodied voices portending death, connects the dots between ideology and action, between propaganda and bloodshed… it points its microphone unflinchingly at the darkest parts of the human soul, while forcing the viewer to hold the camera and search for the brutality within its images and empty spaces. It makes the audience, and their recognition, a necessary ingredient to portraying the bigger picture.”
– Siddhant Adlakha, IndieWire

"A portrait of the war in Ukraine told through haunting images and soundscapes...A spare psychological portrait of soldiers at war. Gleaned directly from their conversations, this is an honest depiction of how empathy disappears and malice takes over.”
– Murtada Elfadl, Variety

“A triumph for public domain-derived journalism (which is Karpovych’s background) and the non-fiction filmmaking that can spring from it.”
– David Katz, Cineuropa