The film consists of a series of episodes about the realities in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine. The scenes are interconnected according to the principle of plotting in Buñuel's The Phantom of the Opera, where a new character from one episode moves to another. The storylines are reconstructions of real events recorded in professional reports, amateur YouTube videos, and memories of local residents. For example, in one scene, a German journalist and a Ukrainian cameraman meet with Russian soldiers who wear no insignia and pretend to be Donetsk militia. Loznitsa learned about this incident from documentary filmmaker Oleksandr Techynskyi, who starred in Donbas as himself. The incident of the lynching of a captured Ukrainian volunteer by the population of the occupied territories actually took place in Zugres.[13] A grotesque episode with a solemn event at the Novorossiysk registry office represents the wedding of the militia members "Kukla" and "BMW".[14]
Production
Budget
The film became one of the winners of the Eighth Competition of the Ukrainian State Film Agency. In November 2017, the Ukrainian State Film Agency signed an agreement to provide a share of state funding for the film's production. The total budget of the project amounted to UAH 71 million 340 thousand (EUR 2.5 million), of which Ukrainian funding amounted to UAH 16.7 million.[15][16] "Donbas was co-produced by Germany, Ukraine, the Netherlands, France, and Romania. The Ukrainian co-producer was Denys Ivanov and the Arthouse Traffic film company. In December 2017, the project was financially supported by Eurimages.[17]
Filming
Filming began on February 8, 2018, on the outskirts of Kryvyi Rih in the Ternivka district of the Dnipro region and lasted for 4 days.[18]
Reception
Critical response
Donbass has an approval rating of 88% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 58 reviews, and an average rating of 7.3/10. The website's critical consensus states, “Brutally powerful and brilliantly filmed, Donbass illustrates man's inhumanity with visceral effectiveness.”[19] It also has a score of 78 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 17 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews”.[20]
