The shell explodes. The floor rocks; the digicam jolts. The males hurl themselves to the ground amid the chaos. The photographs refocus: a number of Ukrainian troopers wearing Khaki fatigues slowly get up. Alongside them, a sublime white-haired man in a black swimsuit and white shirt will get to his toes as nicely.
The man is world-renowned thinker, journalist and warfare correspondent Bernard Henri Levy and the scene is from his new movie Glory to the Heroes, which is out this week, and which emerges from the time he spent throughout summer time 2023 in jap Ukraine,
At 75 years previous, Levy continues to be going to locations that others will not. Here, he’s Chasiv Yar, close to the town of Bakhmut, house to what was the fiercest battle of the warfare in Ukraine, that he was pressured to dive for canopy.
Levy believes that to grasp battle it’s essential go to the very entrance traces, and that is what he has achieved for the reason that starting of the warfare in Ukraine. His aim is twofold: to report for the world – and for historical past – the bravery of Kyiv‘s resistance towards brutal imperialism; and to bear witness to Russia‘s relentless assaults on civilian populations wherever it goes.
Levy made his title within the Nineteen Seventies as warfare correspondent reporting on the Bangladesh warfare of independence towards Pakistan and as a thinker taking up what he noticed because the malignant fallacies of communism and its fellow travellers.
Journalist Bernard Henri Levy and the group of Ukrainian troopers he was with have been in a wooded space near the frontline after they abruptly got here below fireplace. The second was captured in his new movie Glory to the Heroes, which was filmed in Summer 2023
In one terrifying scene the group are pressured to dive for canopy as their trenches are bombarded by Russian artillery
The group retreat from away from the frontline, with senior officers anxious extra missiles are on the way in which
He has been preventing the identical wrestle – towards forces of violence and autocracy that threaten us all – for nearly fifty years.
This movie is many issues: a gripping narrative and a hanging story of heroism and struggling. But it is usually one thing much more vital: a obligatory reminder that if Ukraine falls to the Kremlin’s aggression, it is going to be a blow towards all of us within the West.
The Russians have lengthy believed that we are going to abandon Ukraine simply as they are saying we deserted Iraq and Afghanistan. They consider the circulate of help and weapons will dry up. The West, they consider, don’t have any extra abdomen left for the combat.
Glory to the Heroes is a rebuttal to those attitudes; it’s a rebuttal to the barbarism of Russia’s warfare crimes in Ukraine; and it’s an affirmation of the Western values that we’ve got needed to combat to protect for hundreds of years.
From the Ukrainian amputee who tells Levy that dropping her leg was the very best day of her life as a result of it made her perceive the significance of what her nation is preventing for, to the bombed-out Ukrainians refusing to depart their houses, to Ukraine’s courageous troopers, this movies tells the story of the warfare in all its brutality, and in all its many tales of particular person bravery and selflessness.
It is now extra vital than ever that the world understands what is going on in Ukraine and the determined must proceed to help Kyiv in its combat towards the brutal, modern-day Tsar Vladimir Putin. Glory to the Heroes. A becoming title certainly.
Glory to the Heroes, which is out in US cinemas on 8 December, with a UK launch date but to be introduced.
World-renowned thinker, journalist and warfare correspondent Bernard Henri Levy (left) in a scene from his new movie Glory to the Heroes
In one other scene Henri Levy follows a cellular air-defence unit who’re set of in the course of the evening to combat fight Russian drones
The high-risk method permits the drones to method earlier than capturing it down on the final second
In one part Henri Levy joins wounded veterans who’re recovering from wounds acquired in battle
The wounded troopers all have the identical obsession, he says – to get again on the frontline and hold preventing towards Vladimir Putin’s troops