Canadian-Russian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova spent several months on the Ukrainian front embedded with a Russian battalion, gleaning unfiltered testimonies from soldiers struggling to understand why they are fighting. The end result is a two-hour documentary "Russians at War" currently being screened out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, offering insight into the gritty reality of life at the front. "We almost expect to meet people who are very motivated to kill, but they're not. To meet people who are full of hatred, but they're not," says filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova, "Oftentimes there's a lot of, at least what I encountered, a big sadness that this is happening." However, the documentary has sparked controversy, with critics arguing it gives no sense of the destruction inflicted on Ukraine by Russian forces since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion on February 24,2022. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES