Kevin Macdonald’s documentary follows the former boxer in charge of Ukraine’s capital as he deals with the fallout of the Russian invasion
The bad blood between Vitali Klitschko, former heavyweight champ and now mayor of Kyiv, and Ukraine’s hero president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is not exactly a secret but there’s fascinating detail in this film by Kevin Macdonald that shows how both men – who we’d fondly like to think are united at the hip in the struggle to repel the Russian invasion – appear to undermine each other. I say “appear” of course, because this can’t be anything other than a partial view; with Macdonald’s camera and access firmly focused on Klitschko, and no response provided from Zelenskiy’s camp.
Still, the footage Macdonald gets is remarkable, particularly of Klitschko in meetings with senior American politicians (including secretary of state Anthony Blinken) during which he attacks, in a not especially veiled manner, the Zelenskiy government as becoming an autocracy. In other sequences Klitschko claims Zelenskiy is victimising powerful city mayors and running a murky, Soviet-style political operation, that Ukrainian democracy is in danger and that, without “reform” aid money will disappear. In effect, he accuses Zelenskiy of wanting to turn Ukraine into “Russia 2.0”. True or not, it’s sobering evidence of a split at the heart of the Ukrainian establishment, though perhaps not immediately obvious how it will affect the prosecution of the war, or indeed what comes after hostilities have concluded.