Documenting a War Crime: Roman Liuby’s Film 'Iron Butterflies' and the Downing of MH17 in Donbas

• In Event: Representations of War Crimes and Political Violence in Eastern European Literatures, Films, and Arts

Abstract

On 17 July 2014, soldiers of the Russian Federation fired a missile on a passenger airplane flying over the Donbas region. Flight MH 17, which was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed. All 298 passengers on board this Malaysian Boeing flight died. Roman Liuby’s Film “Iron Butterflies” (“Zalizni metelyky”, 2023) is dedicated to the documentation of this war crime.
In my paper I illuminate the film’s techniques and its different levels of documentation: On one level the film shows the evidence of the downing of MH17, which led to the conviction of the responsible FSB and GRU generals by a Dutch court. On a second level, it examines Russian state television and exposes its mechanisms of manipulation and propaganda. Thirdly, the film operates on a symbolic level. This symbolic language is deeply rooted in Ukrainian cultural history and shows what the perpetrators wanted to make disappear: The missile that was fired by Russian soldiers and whose “iron butterflies” caused the downing of MH17.

Author

• Fabian Erlenmaier, U of Potsdam (Germany)