Three Comrades

The first scene of Three Comrades comes back repeatedly throughout the film. Three young men are driving around Groznyy at night, hard rock playing on the radio. The three friends are named Ruslan, Ramzan and Islam, and the footage was shot in the early 1990s. Shortly thereafter, Ruslan was arrested in Groznyy and executed by Russian soldiers. He left behind a wife and a son. A couple years later, Ramzan was also shot to death by a Russian plane, leaving a family behind as well. Islam, who worked as a doctor during the war, was framed for drug possession and fled the country. Today, he lives in the Netherlands. At the end of the film, Islam says, "I can't remember the past very well anymore." We have just seen that past fly by, reconstructed in both a lucid and heartrending way by Masha Novikova, who has assisted Dutch filmmakers like Jos de Putter and Leo de Boer during their shoots in Russia. In Three Comrades, she incorporates impressive archival footage (often shot by Ramzan, who was a cameraman) to document how Chechnya was forced to its knees, and how much the population of this Caucasian province has suffered. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)