BERLIN, February 3. /TASS/. A film by the freelancing German journalist Mark Bartalmai ‘Donetsk, the Frontline City’ (‘Fronrstadt Donezk’) premiered on Friday in Berlin’s movie house Babylon.
The journalist gathered materials from it over the past two year, with most of the filming done on the territory of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
Bartalmai and his filming crew did their best to reflect a diversity of scenes of everyday life, like bombings by the Ukrainian army units, ruins, the work of emergency services going hand-in-glove with the performances by street musicians, school holidays and popular festivities.
"The main objective of my work was to show the life of the city from within," he told TASS.
Reports in newscasts show a one-sided picture of what is happening in Donbass, Bartalmai said. "Focus is always given to the political aspect of the situation, not the humanitarian one," he said.
Monologues of local residents make up a considerable part of the content in his film. Sharing their impressions with the audiences about the situation in the besieged city are teachers, athletes, children, adolescents, actors of a local theater, and occasional passers-by on the streets.
In spite of organizational problems, Bartalmai hopes to show the film in other German cities and, possibly, in Austria in the short term.
"These plans are vague enough for the time being, however," he admitted. "For instance, a movie house in Hamburg turned down our request recently."
‘Frontstadt Donezk’ will run one more time in Berlin on February 10.