Pope Francis Attends Vatican Screening Of Evgeny Afineevsky’s Ukraine Documentary ‘Freedom On Fire,’ Calls For Peace: “War Is Destruction”

With the war still raging in Ukraine, the membership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made their feelings on the matter one for the history books. In a year of incredible documentaries, the Oscars handed their Best Documentary prize to “Navalny,” a portrait of Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny.

“Morning Joe” pushed back against former President Donald Trump on Monday after he told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) over the weekend that he is the only 2024 candidate who can “prevent, and very easily, World War III” and that he would settle the Russia-Ukraine war in “no longer than one day.” In response to Trump’s claim, Willie Geist pointed out that one “big reason” why Russia has not taken over Ukraine is because of the “strength of NATO” and the United States and Europe’s support of the organization. “His administration officials and people who worked alongside him said he wanted to pull the United States out of NATO, which would’ve effectively made it dissolve,” Geist added.

Naman Ramachandran Documentary “The First Code,” which explores how Ukrainian techies are an integral pillar of the global IT industry, will debut in the spring. The film, from EASE (the European Association of Software Engineering), chronicles the birth and formation of Ukrainian IT, from the creation of the first computer by Ukrainian engineers in the 1950s to the present day, where it has become a powerful industry and an important front in the war with Russia. The film was made based on interviews with representatives of leading Ukrainian IT companies, including EPAM Ukraine, 3DLOOK, ELEKS, Looksery, Techiia holding, Sigma Software Group, SoftServe, Uklon, Infopulse Ukraine and Preply. The V. M. Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, have also participated in the film.

Christopher Vourlias The Thessaloniki Documentary Festival kicks off its 25th edition Thursday at a time when the nonfiction genre has arguably reached unprecedented heights. This year’s festival, which takes place March 2 – 12 in the seaside Mediterranean city, unfolds just days after veteran French docmaker Nicolas Philibert won the Golden Bear in Berlin for his documentary about a Paris mental health care facility, “On the Adamant.” The award capped a fortnight in which Sean Penn’s gonzo doc about Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “Superpower,” also generated plenty of buzz (albeit lukewarm reviews). Meanwhile, Cameroon’s Cyrielle Raingou took home Rotterdam’s Tiger Award just a few weeks earlier for “Le Spectre de Boko Haram,” a riveting view of terrorism seen through children’s eyes. And one summer ago, Laura Poitras triumphed on the Lido with “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” her docu-portrait of the photographer and activist Nan Goldin, which won the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion award.

Russian troops invaded Ukraine and, like many people around the world, he felt helpless at the images of people fleeing their homes.“The world felt like it was in a new place that it hadn’t been in decades,” the three-time Grammy winner recalls.On Friday, the one-year anniversary of the war’s start, Paisley is releasing a new song called “Same Here,” featuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaking proudly about his country and people.The song is Paisley’s first from his new record, “Son of the Mountains,” to be released later this year on Universal Music Group Nashville.The West Virginia native wrote the song with Lee Thomas Miller (co-writer on Paisley hits “The World” and “Perfect Storm”) and Dawes frontman Taylor Goldsmith. It’s a three-part narrative that reflects on universal similarities, despite distance and language.While it doesn’t mention Ukraine specifically, the song ends with Paisley and Zelenskyy in conversation, recorded during a video call.

Good afternoon Insider team, Max Goldbart here. It has been a wild ride of a week with Berlin drawing to a close. Read below for a good ol’ recap.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it is understood that he believed a takeover would only take a few days.

Today marks one full year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began and fears remain that it could last for another.

A year ago today, the world woke up to war.

Ed Meza @edmezavar “Ctrl: Z. Russian Voices,” a documentary that examines the impact of the Ukraine war on the everyday lives of people in a small Russian town, has sold to broadcaster across Europe, including Franco-German channel Arte, TV 3 in Spain and CNN in Portugal. Distributed internationally by Paris-based Java Films, the documentary was filmed in the small Russian town where director Natacha Rostova, using a pseudonym, grew up. It examines the lasting effects the ongoing conflict is having on the lives of families and couples, ordinary people who are silenced, often too afraid to speak out, while others have become fervent opponents of the war.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Watching “Kiss the Future,” a documentary about the band U2’s relationship with wartorn Sarajevo in the 1990s, it’s hard not to think: “We’ve seen this movie before.” That’s not to do with the doc itself so much as how aspects of the 30-year-old footage from Bosnia’s brutal civil war parallel what we’ve seen in the news coverage coming out of Ukraine for the past year. Both involve stranger-than-fiction (or stranger-than-fascism) scenarios of cosmopolitan cities suddenly subject to state terrorism, which makes the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck-produced film coincidentally timely, for all its belatedness. In a sense, “Kiss the Future” is the story of a long-distance romance, between a superstar rock quartet reaching its peak and a once-grand metropolis that’s bottoming out. In the early ’90s, genocidally minded Serbian president Slobodan Milošević tried to subject the happily mixed population of Sarajevo to ethnic cleansing by any means necessary. The area’s young people fought back in whatever spirit-lifting way they could — including founding underground discos, forming punk bands and otherwise keeping the arts alive as they dodged shelling and snipers. An American activist, Bill Carter, had the idea to enlist the stadium-filling U2 in publicizing their plight, which led to nightly satellite appearances by Sarajevo locals on the giant screens of the “Zoo TV” tour’s European leg.

Russell Crowe is back and he’s got some demons to battle.“The Pope’s Exorcist,” out in April, follows Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican (played by Crowe), as he takes on his most mysterious case yet – the possession of a young boy whose experience has ties to an ancient Vatican secret. And, yes, it looks pretty spooky.Amorth was a real person (he passed away in 2016), an exorcist for the Vatican who spoke openly about his work, authoring several books about exorcism and frequently offering his opinion on the subject.

Broadcast and cable networks are planning specials, a town hall and other coverage Thursday tied to the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Correspondents also will report from sites around the country, with Vladimir Putin’s regime mounting a winter offensive.

once again called for red states to secede from the United States, “The View” host Sunny Hostin is pretty sure the Georgia congresswoman is unaware of how and why the Civil War actually started.Shortly after the reveal that President Joe Biden secretly traveled to Ukraine on Monday, Greene claimed Biden “chose Ukraine over America” by visiting the wartime nation on a federal holiday. She later tweeted, “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “Golda,” Helen Mirren, acting with deft skill and control beneath one of those startling transformative prosthetic makeup jobs, portrays Golda Meir during the three-week cataclysm of the Yom Kippur War, which shook Israel to its bones in the fall of 1973. As the actor stands (or, more often, stoops) before us, we can believe our eyes that this is the Iron Lady of Israel. For here is that frown, those beetle brows, that coarse wavy hair tied into a bun like challah bread, that pugnacious nose, that stare of implacability designed to bore a hole in its beholder. Here, as well, is the woman who lit a thousand cigarettes, chain-smoking her way through the war-room anxiety and through the secret medical treatments she was undergoing at the time for lymphoma.

once again, a red state secession – over his surprise Kyiv visit on Monday. “We need a national divorce,” Greene tweeted.

On 24 February 2022, the world watched in horror as Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Missiles were soon raining down on major urban conurbations, including the capital Kuiv, destroying homes, and communities and forcing millions to flee in search of safety. Within weeks, the UK Government launched the Homes for Ukraine programme, encouraging Brits to welcome refugees into their homes.

There is a particular kind of audacity reserved for the wealthy and the well-meaning. Multi-award-winning actor and humanitarian Sean Penn co-directs “Superpower” with Aaron Kaufman, known mostly for his commercial work and his collaboration with writer-director Robert Rodriguez.

Christopher Vourlias Sean Penn said he was happy to be a “propagandist” for the Ukrainian war effort and called Russian president Vladimir Putin a “creepy little bully” Saturday in Berlin, after the world premiere of his gonzo documentary “Superpower,” a gripping, courage-under-fire portrait of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “This is not an unbiased film because this is not an ambiguous war,” he said, calling the conflict “extremely personal.” “I’m very happy to be considered a propagandist. I was happy to make an unbiased film because that is the true story we found.” Donning a black jacket and hoodie and sporting a camouflage trucker cap, Penn repeatedly called on the Biden administration to send precision, long-range missiles to Kyiv to support the Ukrainian war effort.

Sean Penn and a gonzo documentary camera crew found themselves on the frontlines of war as they waited to see if they could interview Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Not only did he land that interview, but he continued to travel back to Ukraine to chronicle the horrors of war a total of six times for “Superpower,” a documentary Penn co-directed that premiered to a standing ovation at the Berlin Film Festival on Friday. In the nearly two-hour-long film, produced by Vice, Penn underlines America’s shortcomings in supporting Ukraine in the war. Zelenskyy, who grows increasingly comfortable around the Oscar-winning actor in a series of interviews, reveals his frustrations at the lack of support in the form of high-impact weapons received from the Biden administration.