Dispatch From Przemyśl
Marine Hugonnier
Dispatch from Przemysl (Notes for a Democratic Europe) is more than just a film, it is an initiative undertaken on the twenty-first day of the war between Ukraine and Russia.
The film reports on the situation at the railway station in Przemysl, which is about ten kilometres from the Ukrainian border in south-eastern Poland. It is a collection of interviews that captures in the silver salts of the film stock the very breath of those fleeing the war and of those on their way to it.
In the first part, the aesthetic of this black and white film brings to mind images from the Second World War, while the ones in the second part are evocative of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s. The content, however, which hinges on civil solidarity and the defence of democracy, belies this aesthetic, opening a gap between what is seen and what is said.