Sergei Loznitsa questions the exploitation of civilians in wartime

Picture of the film THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION by Sergei LOZNITSA © Progress Film

Whether they are classed as fiction or documentaries, the films of Sergei Loznitsa scrutinise the history of Ukraine and of Europe. Films such as In the fog (V Tumane), Maïdan and Donbass contribute to the important task of remembering the past. At a special screening today he presents The Natural History of Destruction, in which he examines the past in order to draw lessons from it that are more current today than ever.

Is it morally acceptable to use a civilian population as an instrument of war? Can mass destruction be justified in the name of a superior moral ideal? Sergei Loznitsa searches for the answers among images of the Second World War.

Solely based on archives, with no narrator, The natural history of destruction is inspired by a collection of essays by W.G. Sebald on the bombardments carried out by the Allies and the Axis powers during the Second World War.

“I was inspired by reading the book because it asks very important questions which remain unanswered today. If you look at current events, you can see that armies in several countries consider it possible, indeed reasonable, to attack populations, destroy towns and to target civil infrastructure as if it were a weapon of war.”

The war in Ukraine had not started when Sergei Loznitsa began this project. It was 2018 and it was difficult for him to obtain the necessary funding to purchase the very costly archive images. It took his team three years to achieve it, and by pure coincidence, The Natural history of destruction was finished while war was raging in Ukraine. Loznitsa had already seen the conflict coming back in 2018, when Donbass had just come out, warning that this was not a localised conflict, but the beginning of a great war.