When Oscar-nominated director Richard Lowery (“The Dirty Wars”) first set out to make a documentary about Russia’s state-funded private mercenary group, the Wagner Group, he believed he was documenting a specific phenomenon. As his research progressed, he realized that the film was about something bigger. How the collapse of modern democratic concepts has created a dangerous space for lawless, unpredictable, and, even more frightening, rapidly expanding mercenary armies. The result of that work is “Hell’s Army,” which will have its world premiere at CPH:DOX.
“Army of Hell” follows dissident Russian journalist Katya Hakim as she pursues Wagner Group founder Evgeny Prigozhin around the world, including Ukraine, Syria and the Central African Republic. The journalist is placed on a list of dangerous people, witnesses several of his colleagues killed or seriously injured at the hands of mercenaries, and operates in the shadows. Speaking to Variety ahead of the Danish festival, Rowley recalled how he contacted veteran journalist Denis Korotkov to begin his investigation.
“You can’t make a movie about Wagner without talking to Dennis,” he says. “He is the man who exposed them for the first time in print and built connections within the organization that no one else had,” Korotkov said, introducing him to the team at the Documentation Center, an investigative project founded in 2017 by Russian civil activist and former political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The group conducts independent investigations into corruption, money laundering, and international political interference involving individuals connected to Russian authorities.
Richard Lowry, courtesy of Jeff Vespa/Getty Images
It was also at this time that Rowley met Hakim. At that point, it became “obvious” to the filmmakers that the journalist would make a “great protagonist.” “She’s passionate and a great investigator. She’s obsessively focused and recklessly brave.”
Having three organizations – Hakim, Korotkoff and Dossier Center – offered Lowry “something unique.” It was an anonymous team of dossiers who had access to Korotkov’s internal access, Hakim’s field reports, and access to hacked documents and information about Wagner from around the world. “It gave us a global perspective and allowed us to closely follow this one character through all of the chaos and violence of war.”
“I’ve been making films about war for probably about 30 years,” the director continues. “I think war reveals the symptoms of our darkest cultural ills. I have worried and followed the rise of mercenaries ever since I saw them on the ground in Iraq in 2004, but when Wagner emerged from the shadows it was clear that we had entered a whole new paradigm. They deployed 30,000 soldiers, more than most armies in Europe. They were the first private company to conquer a European city in 500 years.”
Laurie, who was once immersed in Wagner’s world, said he realized that his films showed “an even darker reality” in understanding the current “authoritarian turn in world culture.” “Democracy does not need a mercenary army,” the director emphasizes. “They are the ones the state turns to when it is taken over by thugs and gangs. There is an urgency, a sense of fear that this darkness is coming everywhere, and a sense of hope that there is still time to sound the alarm for all of us to choose a different collective future.”
Courtesy of CPH:DOX
Inspired by working closely with journalists on this film, and by his own experience as a journalist recognizing the fragile nature of the practice in an increasingly politically polarized world, Rowley says he believes we are witnessing “the death of the liberal order that we lived under in the post-war era.” This, of course, directly affects journalists’ ability to faithfully capture the actions of those increasingly protected by power.
“That’s why I started the film with a famous quote from Antonio Gramsci,” he says. “We are living in a moment when this world has disappeared, and we are still unable to build a new kind of social order. The attacks on and destruction of journalism are part of this whole kind of degeneration of the world we have lived in.”
The director insists that even though his film is set thousands of miles away from the United States, it should set off alarm bells in his home country. “The authoritarian, oligarchic tendencies that we see in Russia are echoed in the United States. Of course, the rise of mercenaries within the U.S. military establishment in Iraq was, in many ways, the inspiration for Putin and the Kremlin to launch their own operations. Complete media control in Russia…so the space in which we operate within the United States is becoming smaller and smaller. I’ve felt that in my work.”
Given this dire assessment of the state of the world, does Laurie still have hope for the future? “Of course,” he replied immediately.
“Otherwise, there’s no reason to make these movies,” he continues. “When you talk to survivors of horrific violence, there are people who want to be heard and who deeply believe in the power of their stories. Even if they’re taking a risk to tell you, they’re taking that risk because they believe the work they’re doing is important and important. Whether I lose hope in an instant or not, I feel like I have a responsibility to those people to give value to their faith.”
“Hell’s Army” is produced by Richard Butler, Atanas Georgiev, Odessa Ray, Rebecca Teitel and Caitlin McNally. Midnight Films will handle international sales.
