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The film opens with a group of crotchety actors having makeup applied in a trailer. But this will be no ordinary shoot – the actors are meant to play the victims of an imaginary Ukrainian shelling, providing invented but emotive subject matter to rally nationalist pride on Russian television. The scenes that follow shift between absurdist noir humour and pure, distilled horror. The mood is set by the season in which the film is shot, the purgatory between winter and spring in which Donbass looks even more depressing than usual, piles of muddy snow melting on the potholed roads beneath slate-grey skies. - Excerpt from The Guardian about the movie Donbass (2018)
