“TIFF is complicit in genocide denial,” says the UCC in a statement.
As outrage grows over the Toronto International Film Festival funding showing a Russian propaganda film financed with our taxpayer dollars (something the Conservatives are now demanding the Trudeau government answer for), the Ukrainian Canadian Congress has issued a statement calling for the resignation of the TIFF board of directors.
You can read the full statement below:
“In response to the refusal of the Toronto International Film Festival to cancel the screening of the Russian propaganda film, Russians At War, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress issued the following statement:
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) calls for the resignation of the members of the Board of Directors of TIFF. The UCC asks that authorities investigate whether Sec. 318 of the Criminal Code (advocating genocide) has been violated with regard to the film Russians At War.
To date, neither the Governments of Canada, Ontario or Toronto have unequivocally condemned screenings of the Russian propaganda film – Russians At War. The UCC calls upon them to do so immediately and to suspend financial or any other support to the TIFF for providing a platform for whitewashing of the genocide being committed by Russia against the people of Ukraine.
Join the demonstration on September 13 at 1:30 pm against this appalling propaganda. More information about the protest is available here:
In April 2022, Canada recognized that Russia is committing acts of genocide against Ukrainians.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court indicted Putin for the “war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children).”
The filmmaker of Russians At War has stated that she did not see the Russian army commit any war crimes, thereby suggesting that the Russian army has not committed war crimes. She has stated that the Russian army – which has murdered, raped, maimed and tortured thousands of Ukrainian children, women and men – are “absolutely ordinary guys.”
TIFF claims that the film is made without the knowledge of the Russian government. This is contradicted by statements made by the director, a former long-time collaborator with Russia Today, the Russian propaganda outlet.
The film includes unchallenged claims – staples of Russia Today and other Russian state propaganda outlets – that Ukraine has attacked its own people; that the Russian army is incapable of war crimes; that Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine was a “civil war” and that Ukrainian civilians welcome Russian occupation.
This filmmaker, having spent 7 months embedded with a unit of Russian soldiers, broke Ukrainian law, violating Ukrainian sovereignty by illegally crossing Ukraine’s border. By continuing to screen this film TIFF is an accessory in the violation of Ukrainian law.”
Spencer Fernando