Ukrainian documentary film on MH17 to premiere at Sundance Film Festival

The world premiere of “Iron Butterflies” by Ukrainian director Roman Liubyi will take place at the U.S. largest independent film festival in January 2023. “This film is dedicated to the passengers and crew of the MH17 flight and all of the victims of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine…it is our response to the murderers and liars, from us as Ukrainian citizens and as citizens of the World,” Liubyi said.

In “Iron Butterflies,” Liubyi explores the circumstances of the MH17 flight downing, Russian propaganda rhetoric surrounding it, and the international community’s reaction to this crime. The film combines archival footage, clippings from the cases, fragments of TV coverage and news reports of various mass media, interviews, documentary observations, elements of performance, and animation.

According to the film’s producer, Andrii Kotliar, participation in the Sundance Film Festival is “an opportunity to convey to the international community the truth about Russian propaganda, which in the motion picture is broken down to its molecules, revealing its true nature.”The documentary was created by the Ukrainian independent filmmaker collective Babylon13 in co-production with Trimafilm (Germany) and RBB/ARTE (Germany).

On Nov. 17, the Hague District Court found Russian proxy commanders Igor Girkin and Sergey Dubinsky and a Ukrainian, Leonid Kharchenko, guilty of shooting down the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board.

In its verdict, the court also qualified the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 as an "international armed conflict" and recognized that Russia had control over its proxies in Donetsk Oblast since mid-May 2014.

Russia has always denied its involvement in the incident and blamed Ukraine.