Documentary Crew Uses Venice Red Carpet to Spotlight Ukrainian Prisoners of War

A film crew took advantage of the Venice Film Festival spotlight Wednesday and wore clothing on its prestigious red carpet embroidered with the distances from the Lido to various locations where Russians are holding Ukrainian prisoners.

Their documentary Songs of Slow Burning Earth, directed by Olha Zhurba, celebrated its world premiere in the Out of Competition strand.

Each piece of clothing, made in collaboration with Ukrainian multidisciplinary artist and designer Alisa Liubomska, featured embroidery carrying eight names of different detention sites and their respective distances in kilometres from the Lido. “Each of these names symbolizes the lives of thousands of Ukrainian men and women,” the team said.

“We wanted to remind people of the horrific conditions in which detainees are held, the illegitimate trials and fabricated charges, the torture, and the deaths,” said Zhurba. “About everything that Russia, as a terrorist state, is doing with impunity to individuals who should never have been there in the first place. It is a huge tragedy very few people abroad know about. Those responsible for these actions must be held accountable.”

Songs of Slow Burning Earth, Zhurba’s sophomore feature-length documentary, is an audiovisual diary documenting Ukraine’s immersion into the war, filmed over the first two years of the full-scale Russian invasion.

The film is a mosaic of landscapes, people, occasional conversations, sounds and silences, gradually displaying the tragic normalization of war in society.

Songs of Slow Burning Earth is produced by Darya Bassel for Ukrainian production company Moon Man in co-production with Anne Köhncke (Denmark), co-founder of the six-time Oscar-nominated production company Final Cut for Real (The Act of Killing, Flee) and Kerstin Übelacker for We Have a Plan (Sweden), ARTE France, and Film i Skåne. Filmotor is handling sales.

During the preparation, the film team consulted with the Center for Civil Liberties and The Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Ukrainian brands Tamar Keburia, Kachorovska, Andreas Moskin, Why Me, and Knitel provided clothing for the campaign.