UK-Premiere: Three Comrades

In this intimate documentary we witness the lives of three lifelong friends whose worlds are torn apart by war in Chechnya’s bloody struggle for independence.

Ruslan, Ramzan and Islam were college friends living in Grozny in the early 90s. Together they spent hours listening to music, cruising the streets of their hometown and hanging out. But the downfall of the Soviet Union and Chechnya’s subsequent struggle for independence changed all that. Initially the three of them stayed in the city together – Ruslan keeping Ramzan company as the aspiring cinematographer captured the bombings and gunfire on tape and Islam working as a doctor in a nearby hospital where he too witnessed the atrocities of war first hand.

Though they entered the war together, their fates were vastly different. Two of the young men never saw their 30th birthdays and the third was wrongfully convicted of terrorism and forced to flee his homeland. Comprised of Ramzan’s archive footage and interviews with surviving family members this delicately powerful film is a moving statement about the impact of war.