Turn in the Wound

This documentary is profoundly disappointing, exploiting the theme of the war in Ukraine. It presents a disjointed narrative where a significant portion, notably the Patti Smith segment, lacks any meaningful substance. The stories of the characters are not woven into a cohesive narrative. The film fails to answer direct questions posed by the filmmaker himself (which are not rhetorical!). The production seems careless, showing a lack of respect for both the subjects and the audience. The editing and cinematography make watching the film a physically uncomfortable experience.

When tackling a sensitive and painful topic like an ongoing war, the filmmaker has no right to adopt a careless attitude under the guise of artistic vision.

I saw 'Turn in the Wound' at the Berlin Film Festival where it received polite applause that lasted for about five seconds - which is about five seconds more than it deserves. That is because Abel Ferrara's latest documentary comes pretty close to being a slap in the face not only of the film-consuming public, but also of the entire country of Ukraine.

It's easily the worst doc I have seen this millennium, and this isn't just my personal opinion, it's a matter of fact. To begin with, it lacks focus and is nearly impossible to summarise, apart from saying that it deals with the war in Ukraine. Even Ferrara himself admits as much in the film when he says that he actually had no plan or idea when he began filming, which is extremely noticeable throughout this 76-minute long cinematic form of fortune. During the entire film I got the impression that Ferrara turned up in Ukraine completely unprepared - alongside a crew - and then hired some local help and looked for something to shoot.

The core of the documentary consists of a handful of interviews with various Ukrainians who are never identified and who talk about personal, war-related experiences. The interviews seem arbitrarily stitched together, but make for an interesting watch and are infinitely better than the film deserves.

This is due to the interviewees themselves who have all harrowing tales to tell and who tell them very well. However, Ferrarra manages to largely deprive these stories of their emotional heft, mainly through unbelievably shaky camera work (possibly the product of smart phones). Frequently, the camera also meanders from the subject to uninteresting details, or even shows Ferrarra and his crew saying meaningless or irrelevant things.

The filmmaker's disinterest in the subject of the film, the war, and in his interviewees is palpable throughout and the occasional questions that we hear from him border on the deeply embarassing, ranging from 'So, you were born in Crimea! Well do you feel Russian?' or 'Should the Dombas (SIC) be given to Russia?' to 'Oh, the Russsians were wearing civilian uniforms (SIC)?' On top of that, none of the interviews is contextualised which results in the viewer never really knowing what incident exactly is being talked about.

All of this is probably the consequence of Ferrara's indifference towards the war. In fact, he cares so little about Ukraine's struggle that in order to spice things up, he decided to intersperse the footage from Ukraine with footage from a poetry recital by Patti Smith in Paris that bears no connection to Ukraine or the war whatsoever.

Towards the end, the scenes from Paris even feel frivolous when the film cuts from deeply troubled Ukraine to Smith's well-to-do audience which doesn't seem to have a worry in the world. But don't mistake this for (misplaced) social critcism. It's simply the result of Ferrara not caring about the editing process.

Overall, 'Turn in the Wound' is a borderline offensive and completely superfluous experience that would have never gotten made if its director wasn't so well known.