The festival will open with a grand premiere. Oleg Nekishev, director of the documentary channel RT, will present the film Bassotti Gang. The Color is Red. The audience will see the story of Italian musicians performing on European stages in support of the people of Donbass. The artists created the “Anti-Fascist Caravan” and this international group has been bringing humanitarian supplies to Donbass since 2014. This year the caravan includes citizens not only from Italy, but also from Germany, Portugal and Turkey.
– We believe that the whole world has taken up arms against us, but in reality it is not so, – says Oleg Nekishev. – A part of the citizens of Europe are not sitting idle, but collecting humanitarian aid. The intrepid leader of the “Basotti Gang” and organizer of the international caravan of anti-fascists, David Cacchione, is the main character of our film. We followed him along the roads of the Donbass, through his native Italy and even into Spain, where he told people in detail what was really going on in the Donbass.
The director told how the filming process took place in the territories constantly shelled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The movement route of the characters in the film was kept completely secret, as well as the names of the hotels where they stayed.
“We were informed of his whereabouts a few hours before filming began,” he continues. – Many heroes met us in Italy in an atmosphere of great secrecy, due to police persecution for their anti-fascist activities. Once in the province of Massa Carrara, the police detained us and a group of heroes and checked the documents for a long time, since we were next to the elegant Italian mansion of Zelensky. Every day of shooting was fraught with the danger of being killed by a landmine landing in Donbass or fascist thugs in Italy.
Several more premieres will take place at the festival. In the film “Let Mom Hear” directed by Denis Prokoshev, Andrey Kozyrev and the authors Anastasia Zvyagina, Vladimir Borzunov – evidence of child trafficking organized by Ukraine to the West and America, as well as frank stories of those who managed to save their daughters and sons from kidnapping.
Director Denis Prokoshev and authors Anastasia Zvyagina, Vladimir Borzunov in their “Own” cycle, dedicated to boys and girls from 18 to 25 years old, will show a day of service on the front line of young artillerymen, volunteers from Spartak and Musa. “Donbass: The Tormented Heart of Russia” by director Ruslan Kechedzhiyan and author Andrey Kudryakov – these are the stories of eyewitnesses of the fascist occupation, interviews with historians and declassified documents of the war years about the genocide of the inhabitants of Donbass during the Great Patriotic War.
The main program of the festival will also include Anna Chapman’s investigative film “Red Alert. Hybrid War” with answers to questions about what is a hybrid war and who is the author of a technology that can destroy the reputation of a person and an entire country in a second.
“We have prepared a very rich program of film screenings for St. Petersburg,” says Ekaterina Yakovleva, RT documentary broadcast director and general producer of the festival. – A lot of new films that we have not shown either in Moscow or in previous cities where the festival was held.
As part of the business program, the festival will include a round table “War and faith. How the Bible helps to understand what is happening” with the participation of Boris Korchevnikov and an open meeting “Cultural Front: art that inspires heroic deeds” with the participation of military correspondents, musicians and poets who travel to the front.
Access to all events by prior registration.
For more information about business and viewer programs, as well as registration for the RT.Doc: Time of Heroes festival, visit https://rtfestival.ru.
