EXCLUSIVE: At the height of its power, the Russian mercenary outfit known as the Wagner Group numbered tens of thousands of soldiers who were dispatched to Ukraine, Syria, and several African countries. Where they went, death followed – as did war crimes and other outrages.
The documentary Hell’s Army, directed by Richard Rowley, examines the rise of this shadowy group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ex-con turned oligarch who operated with the apparent blessing of Vladimir Putin – at least for a time. The film premieres Monday, March 16 at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen in the festival’s F:ACT Competition.
We have your first look at the film in the exclusive clip below.
The documentary is built around the investigative work of journalists Katya Hakim and Denis Korotkov who picked up the mantle from three colleagues who were brutally slain while looking into Wagner’s clandestine activities in Africa. They came to discover Wagner represented “a new model of violence that is transforming the world for all of us.”
“In Hell’s Army, we chase Prigozhin around the world—Ukraine, Syria, Central Africa, then back to Ukraine and his inevitable destruction,” Rowley writes in a director’s statement, referencing the Wagner chief’s ultimate demise in a plane crash in August 2023. “Prigozhin unleashes something terrible onto the world. A private army that tortures, kills, and dies to prop up autocrats, while seizing oil fields and gold mines.
“But when his plane falls out of the sky, an even more terrifying truth is revealed. Prigozhin was just a minor figure in a state that has been captured by mercenaries who are bigger than he ever managed to become.
“This began as a film about the resurgence of a paradigm of warfare that we haven’t seen on a large scale in over a century. But mercenaries are a symptom of a deeper and more terrifying problem.”
Rowley continues, “Democracies don’t need mercenary armies. They are what states turn to when they’ve been taken over by thugs and gangsters. When soldiers are reduced to murderers, and the nation itself is debased into nothing more than a tool of private greed.”
In addition to its world premiere on March 16, Hell’s Army will screen at CPH:DOX on March 18, 19, and 22. The film is produced by Richard Butler, Oscar nominee Atanas Georgiev (Honeyland), Oscar winner Odessa Rae (Navalny), Rebecca Teitel, and Caitlin McNally. Atanas Georgiev edited the film. The music is by Brian McOmber.
In the clip below, a former Wagner mercenary assesses his work for the private army.
