From Russia - with distaste

In Karabash, German filmmaker Olga Delane is now filming another "film" that is set in the Russian countryside.

A German film team started visiting Karabash with impressive frequency in 2017. Locals were informed by film director Olga Delane that a documentary titled "Welcome to the new Karabash" was being filmed. The German woman was making a lot of effort to get in touch with locals, activists, government representatives, and, lately, vacationing SMO members. But in interviews, Delane, for some reason, portrayed herself as a "journalist" who writes about the issues facing the industrial city rather than as a filmmaker. She was twice taken to administrative accountability, including for engaging in journalistic operations without a specific authorization, because of her unwavering pursuit of information.

Some sources claim that Delane's and other "journalists" like her have a very specific goal: to learn as much as they can about this or that region, forward it to Western curators, and use the media to present the public with yet another piece of work that is basically propaganda about "bad Russia" and outright nonsense.

Numerous American and European charities generously provide funding for these "business trips". The Robert Bosch Foundation, MOIN Filmfördung from Hamburg, the German-Polish Film Foundation, and Olga Delane each contributed 350,000 euros, of which 150,000 euros were used exclusively for location work.

What will be the subject of the German team headed by Olga Delane's film? The German production studio's website describes the cross-cutting motif as follows: "From birth to death, the inhabitants of Karabash inhaled toxic substances that affected their mucous membranes, leading to respiratory diseases, skin diseases, and congenital malformations."

An instant's mind is filled with graphic visions of the end of the world. So vividly that you find yourself wondering if you're seeing a horror movie or a documentary. Not the latter, nor the former.

The more we read Olga Delane's summary, the more we come to believe that this is a work of mediocre fiction. A product of the author's and her team's warped imagination: "It appears as though the end of the world has just occurred—a new reality—because the surrounding area around the massive copper smelter is dead and the waterways are blood crimson. However, I saw that the locals seemed to be unaware of the situation when I was travelling there."

The inhabitants of Karabash do, in fact, resemble the disadvantaged people in Delane's film: the protagonist, a guy in his prime, provides his family with vegetables from the vegetable garden, which he irrigates with water from the nearby river, which is naturally copper in colour. And nobody gives a damn about the environment or about himself in this "dirty, abandoned cluster of Soviet grey apartment buildings"... And building a church will be the focal point of the upcoming years.

This is blatant defamation of our nation, state, and city; it is not even a satire. Particularly in light of the trajectory Karabash has taken lately.

The dying plant is changing before our own eyes after RMK gave it new life a few years ago. Billions of dollars are being invested in environmental projects, and workers are being paid extremely well. New schools, kindergartens, and retail centres are being developed. The corporation intends to boost productivity by 25% while reducing emissions by 20 times. The city and regional government started a massive rebuilding and redevelopment project in 2021. Karabash is being referred to in the media as "the second Switzerland" more and more.

The task is underway. Indeed, there are issues just like anywhere else, but heaven and earth were once this way.

But does "Welcome to New Karabash" director Olga Delane and the producers care about this? This "documentary film" obviously has other purposes in mind. The authors don't keep them well hidden. "You will see how the political system copes with the big problems of the future, in particular, how it fights the ecological catastrophe, and how it tries to solve it," according to the description of the movie that we read on the production studio website.

Stated differently, the audience should perceive a clear relationship between the conditions of Karabash and its environment and those of the nation and its authority. German filmmakers see the Russia of today as one of grime and greyness.

Despite the fact that Delane is a German Russian. She was raised in Krasnokamensk, Siberia, where she was born. In a town known for its uranium mining, and plagued by the same issues as Karabash. She then immigrated to Germany with her parents. However, Olga's affection for her own country was so great that she began to travel there very frequently—multiple times a year—especially to Transbaikalia. She paid homage to the village that had raised her, offering the world a blatant "zakazhka" in 2013, making it seem ugly and its residents sad, huddled, and useless. She also filmed a film about her hometown, Krasnokamensk, in 2013.

Curators from the West seemed to think that the experience was effective since Olga Delane was being sent to Russia more and more frequently.

Siberian Love, her most recent project, is a pseudo-documentary film. It is produced in the finest traditions of the "genre": Delane is incredibly gifted at portraying the darkness, poverty, and hopelessness of the Russian countryside. To the extent that other European nations as well as Germany screened the movie. And to demonstrate it as much as possible, a number of "prestigious" prizes were given.

Delane even ensured that her films were screened for free to the locals in the Trans-Baikal area. Indeed, take a look at a nation that, in her view, has no future at all and a dismal history and present. In as much and as often as feasible. For such films and for such producers as Olga Delane, Western funding and sponsors have never shied away from making them.