War reporters, fighting for the truth?

Screening followed by a meeting with Mathieu Cellard (reporter) and Hervé Brusini (journalist, President of the Prix Albert Londres)

Murder, torture, rape, deportation of children and adults… This investigation investigates step by step, with testimonies and written evidence, the war crimes committed and planned by Vladimir Putin and his regime.

When Russian forces withdrew from northern Ukraine and the Kiev region, just over a month after the aggression of February 24, 2022, the world was shocked to discover the scale of the massacres and atrocities perpetrated, particularly against the civilian population. Mass graves, tortures, rapes, neighborhoods wiped out by artillery and bombs… The grim picture of a war in the heart of Europe. With the fighting still raging, the first investigations are underway to gather evidence of these crimes and try to identify the perpetrators. In the territories liberated by the Ukrainian army, the police, international NGOs and ordinary civilians are mobilizing to collect and safeguard everything the occupiers left behind. In Boutcha, but also in Izioum and the Kharkiv region, these areas in the south-east of the country occupied for many months by Russian forces, Ksenia Bolchakova and Manon Loizeau gather testimonies and clues to reveal part of the general pattern that gave rise to these countless violations of international law. They talk to victims of torture and arbitrary detention, as well as deportations of adults and children, organized by the Russian regime.

Terror and propaganda

In Boutcha, the filmmakers first met Alexander Konovalov, whose younger brother had been shot at point-blank range in the street by Russian soldiers. At the risk of his own life, he recovered numerous documents belonging to the occupiers, killed in their tanks, managing to trace them back to the army units present in his town. In the cell phone of one of the occupants, he discovered military maps of the invasion, and in his belongings, a GPS beacon. Analyzed by the film crew, it proves the premeditation of what Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation”. Step by step, Ksenia Bolchakova and Manon Loizeau trace the chain of command, showing that the entire state apparatus was at the service of a criminal war, intent on destroying the Ukrainian nation and identity through terror and propaganda. Their investigation also takes them across the border into Russia, where they interview a retired general who publicly opposed the invasion. A young Russian deserter and a Wagner mercenary recruited in prison also testify on camera. The documentary thus vividly demonstrates the responsibility of an all-powerful Russian president, who has just stood for re-election for a fifth term.

In partnership with the Prix Albert Londres

Prix Albert Londres 2023

Accompanied by lawyer Marie Dosé and Fabienne Servan Schreiber, producer of the film
moderated by Hervé Brusini (journalist, President of the Prix Albert Londres)

Never before have the daughters and sons of criminals been punished in the same way as their parents: the children of Daech jihadists are a textbook case. Since 2019, around 500 French children have grown up in open-air prisons, in total disregard of all child protection laws. This documentary traces five years of reversals and denials by the French authorities; five years of immense hope and violent disappointment for their families, who remained in France, fighting for their repatriation.

In January 2023, after five years of an indecipherable “case-by-case” policy, the UN Committee against Torture condemned France for its refusal to repatriate the families. This was yet another reprimand for the government, which had already been condemned in 2022 by the UN for the “violation of the right to life” of the children in the camps, and by the European Court of Human Rights for the opacity of the State’s responses to families demanding the return of the minors.

These children’s only allies are their relatives in France. Behind the lawyer Marie Dosé, who spearheaded the fight of the Collectif des familles unies, the families are demanding their repatriation. For these minors, there is no alternative but to return home.

In the spring of 2023, over a hundred French children are still surviving in the destitution and violence of Syrian incarceration camps. What does the future hold for these little French children, crushed by adult conflicts, at a time when Daech seems to be rising from the ashes all around them?

In partnership with the Prix Albert Londres.

Marie Dosé has been a member of the Paris Bar for over twenty years. From the Karachi bombing to the Boulin affair, from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 to the Édouard Louis affair, she has acted as both defense counsel and plaintiff. In particular, she acted for the defendants in the Tarnac case, and for the family of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. She regularly defends activists from the non-governmental organization Greenpeace, and for the past five years has been fighting for the repatriation of French children held prisoner in Syria. She has published Cour d’assises: quand un avocat et un juré délibèrent (2014) with Editions Dalloz (Les Sens du Droit collection) and, with her colleague Daniel Soulez Larivière, Deux générations, un barreau (2023). She is also the author of two essays published by Editions Plon and L’observatoire: Les victoires de Daech (2020) and Eloge de la prescription (2021).

Hervé Brusini was born in Saint-Quentin in 1953. As a journalist, he was in turn a senior reporter, head of department, editor-in-chief of the 8 p.m. news and news director for the French public broadcasting service. Winner of the 1991 Albert Londres prize, he is the author of Voir la vérité (PUF, 1985) and Copie conforme, pourquoi les médias disent-ils tous la même chose? (Seuil, 2011). In 2020, he was elected President of the Albert-London Prize, as well as France Médias Monde’s CHIPIP.