Join us for the third installment of Films at the Whitney’s Fall 2024 screening series, World Documentaries Today!

On July 17, 2014, a passenger jet en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. Roman Liubyi’s poetic documentary film interweaves archival material, news and social media clips, and dramatized and animated scenes in order to reveal the strategies that were used to shroud the truth around this devastating political and military operation. This forensic, dream-like investigation reveals Russia’s role in the attack and the implementation of a disinformation campaign to further military aggression. Named after the butterfly-shaped shrapnel found in the bodies of the pilots, the film serves as evidence of a war crime that remains unpunished. The film counters Russia’s attempts to rewrite history with an absurd version of events pushed by the Kremlin as a prelude to the subsequent full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Directed by Roman Liubyi. Country: Ukraine, Germany. 84 min. Ukrainian, Russian, English, and Dutch with English subtitles.