RUSSIA'S LOST SONS (AKA HUNTING RUSSIA'S LOST BOYS: DISPATCHES)

With intimate access filmed over a year, this is a deeply personal and emotional journey with women whose loss leads them to seek answers from the Russian state.

The film follows them as their loved ones first go missing in Ukraine, then as they seek answers from what they see as a largely unresponsive administration, discover leads indicting they might still be alive, search military morgues trying to rule out their sons’ death, get sent a body that one woman insists is not her husband and join forces with hundreds of other women also searching for their loved ones missing in Ukraine.

Through these women, viewers will experience the personal cost of young men being sent to war, some of whom were just doing their compulsory military training, mobilisation with a lack of support and the way many young men seeking a way out of poverty got thrown into Russia’s deadly assault.

The filmmakers meet men trying to record the true extent of the death toll risking jail by visiting cemeteries and hear from die-hard Putin supporters who believe the invasion is the next, inevitable step towards safe-guarding “Russia’s greatness”.

Made under increasingly difficult circumstances as Russia’s government clamps down on independent reporting, this film is a unique and surprising window on what Russians are experiencing and how many are also the victims of Putin’s war in Ukraine.