Iron Butterflies, 2022.
Written and directed by Roman Liubyi.
SYNOPSIS:
In summer 2014, sunflower fields and coal mines in eastern Ukraine turn into a 12 square kilometers crime scene. A multi-layered investigation into the downing of flight MH17, in which a butterfly-shaped shrapnel found in the pilot’s body implicated the state responsible for a war crime that remains unpunished.
Roman Liubyi’s frequently jaw-dropping documentary Iron Butterflies concisely argues within a tight 84 minutes that the 298 people killed onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 – a commercial plane shot down by Russian forces over Ukraine in 2014 – should be considered victims of a war crime. This chilling, shrewdly edited polemic offers an aggressive indictment of both the state-sponsored terrorist act itself and Russia’s subsequent response.
Liubyi has amassed an incredibly diverse array of material for his film; an avalanche of evidence compounding the obviousness of Russia’s complicity in the plane’s destruction. From social media footage of the distinctive surface-to-air missile launchers being transported through the area, to incriminating audio recordings of those involved in the attack, and even images of Russian separatists posing gleefully with the plane’s wreckage, it makes for a cinematic argument as upsetting as it is infuriating.
The sight of the victims’ corpses being bagged up somehow pales compared to the nauseating footage of civilians cheering at the black smoke billowing from the wreckage site, under the belief that it was a Ukrainian junta shot down. Russian-backed news networks promptly claim the act as a victorious one until the truth emerges, at which point they shamelessly shift the blame to Ukraine.
Free of hand-holding voiceover narration or talking heads, Liubyi’s film instead relies on pitch-perfect juxtaposition. In its most memorable and harrowing sequence, the doc repeatedly cross-cuts between the findings of the Dutch-led joint investigation team (JIT) and Russia’s propagandised response.
A Putin-backed weapons company stages an elaborate experiment to refute the type of missile which hit the plane, and a state news network ties itself in knots suggesting that phone footage of the missile launcher convoy was fabricated using visual effects and perspective tricks. One network even parades a psychic out to refute the JIT’s investigation, such is the extent of the flabbergasting tidal wave of misinformation.
This horrifying-yet-transfixing footage is periodically broken up by more surreal diversions; ambiguous, black-and-white performance pieces of varying quality and interest, such as an interpretative dance sequence between soldiers and civilians, and a bizarre hybrid of live-action and animation in the final stretch. These interludes won’t work for everyone and perhaps only detract from the doc’s more hard-hitting journalistic verbiage, but cannot undermine the power and persuasiveness of its most impactful material.
It is a film packed to the brim with disturbing implications of Russian involvement, and occasionally veers into such absurd territory as to border on parodical – were it not so overpoweringly terrifying. This is especially true when a Russian company designs a children’s bed to resemble one of the missile launchers while its spokesman declares with a straight face, “We’re not political.”
It’s all sewn up with a present-day epilogue showing the Russo-Ukrainian War as it continues to rage today, with little end in sight. Liubyi has no answers to that, but by framing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as a ripple in the ocean leading to current circumstances, and placing so much emphasis on the innocent lives lost, he delivers a potent tribute to their memories.
Iron Butterflies is a righteously angry, courageous work of documentary filmmaking and damning indictment of a horrific act, the reverberations of which continue to be felt today.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
Originally published January 24, 2023. Updated January 23, 2023.
