Patti Smith’s unmistakable voice reads out work by French avant-garde artist Antonin Artaud as on display screen, the viewer follows a Ukrainian soldier by a point-of-view digital camera, showing nearly video game-like as he strikes alongside a smoky subject at daybreak.

In “Turn in the Wound,” long-time filmmaker Abel Ferrara intertwines clips of U.S. singer-poet Smith’s performances in Paris with the testimonies of peculiar Ukrainians about Russia’s invasion and grainy movies taken mid-battle by unnamed fighters. No one is launched by identify, not even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who sits down for a tightly shot interview with the digital camera staff to reward the fortitude of Ukrainians.

“Freedom is not something global, it’s something very close to (one’s) person, to heart, to soul, freedom, to just have this possibility to wish and to choose,” Zelenskiy tells the digital camera. Ferarra, recognized for “Bad Lieutenant” and “King of New York,” himself sits right down to be interviewed by a Ukrainian TV reporter for the movie, chastising a stylist for fixing a hair misplaced when there are grave matter like a battle to be mentioned.

“I’m an intuitive filmmaker,” he tells the reporter, in a thick Bronx accent, to clarify why he felt compelled to movie in Ukraine. The movie, which premiered on the Berlin Film Festival on Friday evening, coincided with a go to by Zelenskiy to Germany and France in a bid to safe their help as help from the U.S. turns into much less of a positive guess and Ukraine is at a vital level within the battle towards Russia because it nears its third 12 months.

In a press release accompanying the movie, Ferrara explains his movie’s ensemble: “When I see Patti Smith in her work, her life, the poet, the singer, the mother, or President Zelenskiy humbly governing, I become inspired, I want what they have, I want to be near them, learn from them, film them.”

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)