Three Comrades

Three friends - Ruslan, Ramzan and Islam - cruise the streets of the Chechen city of Grozny at the start of the 1990s with their car radio up full blast. A few months later, Ruslan is arrested and executed by Russian soldiers. Ramzan is the next one to die when he is killed during an air strike. The last of the three friends - Islam the doctor - only survives the war as a result of being deported to Holland. This is where director Mascha Novikova begins shooting her documentary on the tragic destinies of the three cheerful comrades. The film looks at the Russian-Chechen conflict from the point of view of the Muslim inhabitants. As a result, it is primarily based on interviews with survivors, who recall the three men who are the central figures in the story. Fragments of the past are supplemented with a rich film archive that was found in the estate of Ramzan, who was a cameraman. The film creates an invaluable mosaic of intimate confessions and candid thoughts from a humiliated citizenry, whilst also providing the neutral watcher with an unusually authentic insight into a place where massacres occurred and into the life of ordinary people in the middle of a war zone.