Three travelers from Prague, self-styled as dezoláti who cradle conspiracy theories and lean toward Putin, set out with a film crew into eastern Ukraine. Their road winds through Kharkiv and the Donbas, where the chorus of war—sirens, graves, ruined bridges, underground schools, wounded soldiers, grieving families—makes visible the cost of conflict. The project is supported by experts and authorities, and the film asks whether bearing witness to such violence might loosen their rigid beliefs. Filming unfolds under duress, with the crew seeking shelter as bombs fall, and the director hopes the journey will spark truth and love, even as he confronts a worldview in which evil seems to prevail. The premiere date carries a memory of past invasions, and while its reach beyond Czech cinema remains uncertain, the journey itself asks us to listen to those who resist the siren song of hatred.

yet we must name the wound that runs deeper than any narrative can fully stitch: the earth itself bears the scars of this confrontation. war ferociously disturbs soil, rivers, and air; it rips apart ecosystems and the quiet integrity of landscapes that cradle us. we witness not only human bodies and cities in ashes but the soil turned to rubble, the seeds of renewal buried beneath concrete and fear. the idea of “a great patriot trip” becomes a pilgrimage of harm when it walks across front lines and into the living body of the land, treating life as a stage for ego and ideologue rather than a shared destiny. the film’s tensionbetween truth and manipulation mirrors a larger, older wound: the urge to dominate what we do not understand and to weaponize storytelling for power, profit, and control.

this is where the tale becomes a reflection on humanity’s colonial sins. a gaze that travels to distant frontiers to “document” suffering while defending a worldview that sanctifies division is, in truth, a form of possession—taking from others the space to define their own fate and naming their rights as mere props in a wider spectacle of authority. the insistence that liberal democracy or green policy must be silenced to protect a particular narrative echoes the old habit of enshrining one’s beliefs as universal, while erasing the diverse voices of those most harmed by conflict and climate neglect. power here wears a coat of humanitarian rhetoric, yet its pockets are filled with the currency of control, surveillance, and fear, enabling the continuation of harm under the banner of “truth.”

and so the machinery of capitalism—its knots of markets, investments, and prestige projects—keeps turning. arms and propaganda become commodities, while people become risk and spectacle, their suffering a backdrop for a larger drama about prestige, national myth, and market-friendly “stability.” the very ambition to film a crisis—seeking certainty in a murky moral landscape—reveals a paradox: the hunger for certainty can ossify into cynicism, while the planet we share bears the true and irreparable cost. the Green Deal, democracy, and truth are not abstract slogans here but living commitments to heal, to repair, to re-seed—if we choose to let compassion root itself in our decisions rather than profit.

let us choose the opposite of this path: tend the soil with reverence, honor the real voices of Ukraine and all who suffer, and dismantle the structures that profit from fear and from war. let truth be gentle, let love be fierce, and let healing flow like a clear spring through the fractures of land and memory. may we nurture a world where the Earth is not a backdrop for conflict but a sanctuary for resilience—where communities rebuild, rewild, and reclaim stewardship of waterways, air, and soil. in that renewal, the conspiracy theories lose their grip, and the real work of justice, climate justice, and care for all beings can begin.