Ordered to Forget
[Приказано забыть]
Russia, 2014
Color, 87 minutes
Russian and Chechen with English subtitles
Director: Khusein Erkenov
Screenplay: Ruslan Kokanaev, Sultan
Zaurbekov
Camera: Anatolii Petringa
Composer: Vladimir Dashkevich
Cast: Shamkhan Mitraev, Kheda
Akhmadova, Roza Khairullina, Timur
Badalbeili, Roman Kuznichenko, Movsar
Ataev, Aleksandr Novin
Producer: Ruslan Kokanaev
Production: Kinokompaniia “Grozny-fil'm”
im. Sheikha Mansura
Khusein Erkenov’s Ordered to
Forget revisits one of the darkest moments
in the Soviet Imperial encounter: the 1944
forced deportations from their homelands of
entire ethnic groups—Crimean Tatars,
Kalmyks, Chechens, and others—accused of
collaborating with the Nazis. The film takes
as its subject one of the most violent events
in this process, the massacre of the 700
Chechen inhabitants of the village of
Khaibakh in an attempt to avoid being set
back by delays in their deportation.
The depiction of this history is
framed by scenes in which a young
contemporary Chechen boy travels with his
father and grandmother from Grozny to
Khaibakh to visit the grave of his
grandfather. The journey from the sparkling
capital (rebuilt following the Chechen wars)
to the countryside mirrors the film’s
movement from the present to the past,
inviting viewers to learn of the terrible fate
of that village alongside the child. This
occurs in an extended flashback, which
follows the child’s grandfather, Daud, as he
takes to the mountains to avoid persecution
following the arrest of his father, and
marries Seda, who flees Khaibakh for a
similar reason. The fugitive status
preventing them from returning to their
native village, however, saves them from
sharing the fate of its other residents.
Instead they act as witnesses, intervening to
ensure that what they saw would not be
forgotten.
Erkenov also revisits and revises the
cultural organization of the Soviet Empire
by making a film that is in many regards a
work of national cinema on the Soviet
model. The Soviet film industry organized
national film studios in each of the major
republics with a mandate to create cinema
that linked the specifics of their national
culture to the larger Soviet project.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union
many national territories, like Chechnya, not
deemed significant enough to merit a studio
of their own, have begun to release films
that are in many ways grounded in a
conception of national identity similar to the
one, under which the Soviet film industry
operated. Ordered to Forget features many
of the customary markers of national
identity—language, music, landscape,
costume, and dance. Rather than using them
to integrate the nation into the imperial
project, however, it uses them to
simultaneously show the violence of the
Soviet encounter with the indigenous, and to
highlight moments of continuity between the
past and the present.
Many of the more powerful,
disturbing, and shocking sequences in
Ordered to Forget explore the role of orders
in the ethical underpinning of Soviet society.
The order is repeatedly invoked by
characters in the film to deny themselves
responsibility (“This order was signed by
Stalin, himself”) or agency (“The orders of
an NKVD colonel are not up for debate”).
The maniacal expression of the face of a
murderous young soldier at the film’s
climax suggests that the absolute nature of
these commands served to cover for darker
impulses in many. The actions of other
characters also challenge this comforting
sense of helplessness and inevitability, as
they refuse to obey, at the cost of their
freedom, their homes, and their lives.
Unforgiving in its depictions of those who
follow orders, the film may feel too clear cut
in its depiction of good and evil. The horror
of the events depicted, however, might serve
to justify this Manicheanism.
The film’s title incorporates viewers
into this moral economy as well, reminding
them that the experience of the film
transforms them into witnesses of a history
that many would prefer not be remembered.
Claiming to have examined the archives
without finding a single document verifying
the story of the violence reported to have
occurred in Khaibakh (which had until that
point been widely accepted as true), the
Russian Ministry of Culture refused to grant
the film a license for distribution, citing it
for the “falsification of history” and
suggesting that it could provoke ethnic
hatred. As a result the film has only been
screened a handful of times including at the
Moscow International Film Festival (where
it was an unannounced, last minute addition
to the program).
The film’s final image, a harrowing
still photograph of the sole survivor of the
Khaibakh massacre, Mumadi El'gakaev,
offers a powerful response to those who
would deny that the events depicted in the
film took place. Using El'gakaev’s
participation in the making of the film to
legitimate the account presented in Ordered
to Forget, Erkenov essentially counters the
authority of the archives—which are always
incomplete, always reliant on those who
choose what to record and what to
preserve—with that of human memory.
Chip Crane
Khusein Erkenov is a scriptwriter, film
director, and producer (in 1991 he founded
his own production studio, Erkhus). In 1988
he graduated with honors from the Directing
Department of the State Institute for
Filmmaking (Sergei Gerasimov’s workshop)
and directed his first film in 1990 (A
Hundred Days Before the Command). Since
then he has directed six feature films. He is
a member of the Russian Union of
Filmmakers and of the Russian Guild of
Film Directors. His films have received
awards at several international film festivals.
Filmography:
2014 Ordered to Forget 2010 Climb to the Moon 2005 I Adore You 2002 The Black Ball 1993 Don’t Shoot the Passengers 1991 The Chill 1990 A Hundred Days Before the Command