Chechen Gambit

In chess, a gambit is an opening in which a minor piece, like a pawn, is offered in exchange for a favourable position. Although the people in this documentary by Sergei Bosenko have differing opinions about the war in Chechnya, they all have the feeling of being sacrificed on the chessboard of the Russian and Chechen rulers. Whether they believe in the struggle for an independent Chechnya or in peace and quiet within the Russian Federation, the many years of war have left everybody with a sense of despair. Bosenko remains in the background, letting the people talk freely about their former hopes, their solutions to the conflict and their insinuations directed at the rulers and the other party. For example, instead of analysing the conflict, he shows the influence that the battles in Chechnya have on the inhabitants. Incorporating a great deal of archive footage of hostilities and images from a helicopter or a tank, the film shows that the war is constantly in the foreground. As a tragic, but increasingly ordinary part of everyday life. The people who are interviewed just keep talking in the voice-over, while the spectator watches images of a raid on Chechen houses, where Russian soldiers are apparently looking for rebels. Bosenko alternates the images with a few melancholy songs, that are just as much part of the region as the soldiers with crew cuts who sing them.