Pope Francis attends Vatican screening of Evgeny Afineevsky’s Ukraine documentary Freedom On Fire, calls for peace: ‘War is destruction’

EXCLUSIVE: Pope Francis again pleads for peace in Ukraine after attending extraordinary screening of Evgeny Afineevsky’s documentary at Vatican Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Struggle for Freedom.

The performance, in the New Synod Hall within the walls of the Vatican, came on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor, a war that killed or wounded an estimated 180,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers. More than 30,000 civilians are estimated to have died. The pope sat next to several Ukrainian women who appear in the film, and when the lights came on, he led an audience of about 250 in prayer.

Speaking mainly in Italian, the Pope asked the Lord to heal humanity from the current of hatred that fuels war: “When God created man, He said to take the earth, make it grow, beautify it . The spirit of war is the opposite: destroy, destroy…don’t let it grow, destroy everyone. Men, women, children, the elderly, everyone.”

Afineevsky received an Oscar nomination for 2015 Winter on Fire: The Freedom Struggle of Ukraine – the film about the 2014 Euromaidan revolution that later led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the instigation of armed rebellion in eastern Ukraine. On Friday night, he presented an edited version of his latest documentary, updated with very recent images from the conflict. Just before the show began, Afineevsky told Pope Francis: “Thank you for showing your solidarity with the Ukrainian people during the nine years of this war and the one year of Russia’s great intervention and occupation of Ukraine… Because for me it is. “very important and symbolic to be with you and all of you [the audience] here on the 24th^e February, the day we commemorate this tragic beginning of the war.”

The director told Deadline that, to his knowledge, this is the first time a pope has attended a film screening on Vatican grounds. Sitting next to the Pope was Nataliia Nagorna, a Ukrainian journalist and war correspondent who is the focus of the documentary, and several other characters from the film, including Anna Zaitseva, a young mother whose son Sviatoslav was just a baby at the time of the invasion took place. . . The toddler, now 14 months old, attended the performance with his mother and appeared to please the pope with his friendly manner. Once he played with the Pope’s cane and even nibbled on it.

Afterwards, Zaitseva, Nagorna and a select group of others held a private audience with the Pope. Zaitseva informed Pope Francis about her husband, who appears in the film, who enlisted to fight in the Ukrainian army after the invasion began. She said he was being held somewhere in a Russian POW camp. Nagorna gave him a white, tinted part of a cotton plant – cotton has become a symbol of resistance in Ukraine.

“It was a very important event,” Nagorna told Deadline exclusively, “because we have to talk about Ukraine, about our imprisoned people, about our imprisoned soldiers, about our destroyed cities, towns, villages … tell the world, they did it to stop all this. You have to stop Putin, stop Russia, stop totalitarianism, stop genocide, stop ecocide.” She added, “It’s really important, we need the support of the Pope and all the citizens of this world… We have to free our people again.”

Zaitseva said that watching the film brought back vivid and heartbreaking memories.

“It reminded me of what it felt like to be on the front lines, what it was like to be at the shelter with a three-month-old baby. And I also saw my husband there on the big screen… It was actually very, very difficult. I was in tears and it hurts a lot. It’s hard to wake up every day and understand that your husband is not there and you don’t even know where he is. It’s hard to understand that your house is destroyed, your city is occupied, your friends are killed and my family is totally destroyed [dispersed].”

Zaitseva added: “The war is not like the Hollywood movies. War is ugly. I don’t like it when people try to make war in a more poetic way. In war there is nothing poetic, nothing beautiful. War is ugly, war is something that shouldn’t exist in 21 these days^St century.”

Afineevsky flew to Rome on the morning of the 24th^e after showing his documentary in the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Thursday night. He forged a personal bond with Pope Francis by directing the 2020 film Francescoabout the papacy of the first Latin American pope to prioritize the healing of the planet, acceptance and love for LGBT people, an ecumenical approach to world religions and help to the poor.

What the performance of freedom on fire, Vatican News described the Pope as “visibly moved by this film which is so raw and realistic”. In his prayer, Pope Francis said: “Today [after] a year of this war, let’s look at Ukraine, pray for Ukrainians and open our hearts to the pain. Let us not be ashamed to suffer and cry, for war is destruction. A war makes us smaller and smaller. May God make us understand this.”