In the light of the war that Russia has launched against the sovereign and European country Ukraine, our film OSTROV has taken on an additional and particularly sinister meaning.

For us, the island of Ostrov was a metaphor for contemporary Russia, once again ideologically isolated after a short democratic period following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, however, Russia is turning into an island cut off from the world at all levels: political, economic, cultural and above all moral - a country that finds itself in the role of a pariah, outcast from the so-called democratic or civilized nations.

In our film OSTROV we show the influence of the ferocious propaganda that completely dominates the information space in Russia, while freedom of expression is practically non-existent and independent media are banned or declared “Foreign agents". The inhabitants of Ostrov, like all the Russian people, are thus subjected daily to the lies of a propaganda that portrays Ukraine as a fascist aggressor from which the Russian-speaking rebels of Donbass must be liberated. Thus, an ultra-nationalist narrative is woven around the victory over Nazism during the “Great Patriotic War”, the invincibility of Russia, a strong and powerful army recreated by the will of President Putin. The masses are manipulated by means of a television show in which Vladimir Putin plays the role of the savior of the Russian people, in the face of an aggressive West that lost its values. If we naively thought that propaganda was primarily used to maintain control over the native population, as it is done in all authoritarian regimes, we now understand that it was much more: the Russians have been psychologically prepared for a real war that is taking place two hours by plane from us. We may not have understood the full extent of it, but the film foreshadows the disaster that is unfolding before our eyes today. In this sense, OSTROV, the lost island, is truly premonitory.

SVETLANA RODINA & LAURENT STOOP