It all starts with an Instagram reel. The app’s algorithm mixes various recent popular videos , edits them, and plays them with the sound of upbeat pop music. The kinds of things our smartphones do these days. A compilation of the week’s highlights, or our latest holiday. But in this case, the images are of the war on Ukraine. Joyful music plays while explosions and death fill the screen. An image that perfectly sums up The Longer You Bleed, a documentary about our relationship with screens in all their absurdity, hilarity, and violence.
This documentary combines the stories of Ewan, a British filmmaker based in Berlin, and Liuba, a Ukrainian refugee in Germany since the Russian invasion. He narrates in voiceover behind the camera, sharing his thoughts as he sees the images. In front of the camera, Liuba opens up about her experience of war, both on screen and in real life, and how it has affected her mental health and her reality. The film then gives a voice to several young Ukrainians based in Berlin and how they too are experiencing this strange new reality from their screens: a mix of raw stories, unedited images, videos of kittens, and viral memes…. Through their experiences, the film questions our relationship with social media, how it defines our relationship with the world today, specifically in contexts of violence. The title is inspired by the phrase, “If it bleeds, it leads”: a journalistic principle according to which the bloodier a news story is, the more it attracts readers, and therefore the more it will be highlighted.
Compassion Fatigue
While the war in Ukraine is the starting point for the film, the subject is more about our relationship with the internet and how it also changes our relationships with each other. The term “compassion fatigue,” which refers to vicarious stress created by constant indirect exposure to traumatic events, has been around since the 1960s, but is today more relevant than ever. The film highlights a crucial paradox of our humanity, nowadays super-connected to the rest of the world, yet so disconnected from reality. As one of the people interviewed says: “The first year, I cried every time a house was bombed. Now, it doesn’t affect me anymore, I’m used to it, it’s just another event. I think I’ve lost a bit of my humanity.”
In the second part of the film, Ewan accompanies Liuba to Ukraine, in a desire to step behind the screen and confront himself with reality. Faced with devastated landscapes, stories of lives destroyed behind wrecked car bodies, and the smiles of people living their lives as best they can, the director asks himself: do these images transcend the screen and can they bring about change, or do they only add to the violence and accentuate insensitivity? Is it already too late?
A Visually Daring Narrative
Cinema, television, smartphones: different screen formats interact in this film, which grapples with modern storytelling. Memes found on the internet add a touch of absurd humor to the film. As the French expression says, “humor is the politeness of despair,” and these moments of “politeness” allow the narrative to take a step back and breathe.
What can we do in the face of these findings? Switch off our phones and read a book? Capitalize on violence and become a war influencer? The Longer You Bleed openly admits that it does not have a clear answer, but wants to open up a discussion on these issues. By inviting us to reflect on this disillusioned observation, the film creates a bond based on the despair, powerlessness, and empathy that unite us.
Of course, when reflecting on violence, one inevitably also thinks of the situation in Gaza. Often referred to as “the first genocide live-streamed in 4K,” the bloody images that have been flooding our screens non-stop since the end of 2023 are also a source of trauma, helplessness, despair, and erosion of empathy. As someone says in the documentary: “Before it was news. Now it’s just another war somewhere.”
For its focus on young people and how they deal with the violence of our modern societies, for reflecting on how social media and cinema mutually influence each other, and for its strong visual storytelling that mixes different formats and techniques, we awarded the FIPRESCI prize to this film that stands on the borders between real and virtual, between feelings and algorithms, between empathy and indifference.
Official website of the film : https://www.thelongeryoubleed.com/
Elli Mastorou
Edited by Robert Horton
© FIPRESCI 2025