Beata Bubenec: God’s Will
This is the kind of portrait documentary, where you learn a lot. In this case you watch the film with open mouth whispering to yourself, ”this can’t be true” even if you know from other media that this kind of fanatic intolerance and hatred exists in today’s Russia and that a youth organisation leader as Dmitry Enteo is welcomed to meet high ranked representatives from the church as well as politicians and people from the legal administration. I googled ”Dmitry Enteo” after my screening and saw that he has the opinion that the murdered Charlie Hebdo journalists were the real terrorists and deserved the punishment for blasphemy – and that he thinks that Putin might be God!
Much credit to the film team for inviting the viewer to get close to Dmitry Enteo in his home, to hear him recite poems, to see him with his girl friend , to see him in the streets with his colleagues from the organisation God’s Will. There’s a lot of street clashes caught on camera, maybe too many, and yet there are moments that stand out like one with a young woman crying because a friend of hers, a former friend, now is on the aggressive anti-gay side, including his beating up of innocent demonstrators.
Some might say, why make a film about such a fanatic, some might say idiot, who advocates violence. I would say precisely therefore, we have to know what goes on in the heads of rethorically competent, seducing youth leaders like him, don’t we?
To have empathy with him if that has been the ambition, sorry No.
Russia, 2014, 55 mins.
The film won the Main Prize at the DocuDays UA 2015 in the category Docu/Right
