Canadaland

The documentary Russians at War shows the invasion of Ukraine from the point of view of Moscow's troops. The doc was supposed to screen during the Toronto International Film Festival, but organisers cancelled a screening amid protests and over threats to festival operations and public safety.A large part of the film’s funding came through TVO, Ontario's public broadcaster. The filmmaker is a Russian-Canadian, Anastasia Trofimova, who once worked for Russian state-funded broadcaster RT. Trofimova made the film while living with front-line Russian troops for seven months.How exactly did she do that? Not without the consent of the Russian army, one would assume.  We are told again and again that Russia controls one of the most sophisticated misinformation, disinformation, propaganda machines the world has ever known. Russia is in our algorithms, spreading fake news and skewing our elections. So, clearly, this Anastasia Trofimova is not somebody who we should be handing large sums of Canadian public mon