Key Points

The director opened up about the movie's title, calling himself a "criminal" while referring to the eight-and-a-half-year sentencing in absentia he received from a Moscow court last year for spreading anti-war sentiments.

"It's called that because I'm a criminal now," quips Rodnyansky as quoted by Deadline.

Revealing more about his project, the director said that his upcoming documentary will combine elements of doc movies, which he shot at the end of the Cold War, with more recent footage from the war in Ukraine and WWII footage obtained from his family, as per the outlet.

"I used fragments of the movies I did at the end of the Soviet Union times, because I started out as a director, as well as fragments of movies done by my mom and grandfather during World War II," said Rodnyansky as quoted by Deadline.

The footage in the documentary is likely to contain battlefield scenes, prisoner of war footage, and trials.

"It's a very personal statement which tells the story through one family practically. It starts with the beginning of the war and then goes back and forth. I shot the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Eastern Germany in 1990 and, I say it in the movie, but I had a feeling that these people were not coming back from the war but that they were moving to the war. Yesterday they were soldiers of one army and citizens of the same state, and now they're coming to different countries and becoming citizens of different states and soldiers of different armies," said Rodnyansky as quoted by Deadline.

Rodnyansky, who is likely to have the project finished by next month, says that he is currently in talks with the major international film festivals for the movie to get the festival circuit.

As per Deadline, Rodnyansky is looking to shoot his next slate of films all outside of the US, namely in Eastern European countries such as Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Latvia, and other territories.

- ANI