Zainap Gashaeva's parents called her 'Coca' – the dove. Born in exile in Kazakhstan, she became a businesswoman and raised four children. Since 1994, she has been documenting what is happening daily in her homeland: abductions, torture, murder. What President Putin calls "anti-terror action" has taken on the traits of genocide. It is suspected that up to 30 percent of the Chechen population has been killed. The world is silent, whether out of ignorance, helplessness, or opportunism. Zainap Gashaeva and other women hid hundreds of videocassettes and transported them to Western Europe. She hopes a tribunal will be held and the guilty punished – no matter what side of the conflict they stand on.
"Coca was conceived from the start to be about women who struggle against the destruction of bodies and souls. About women who condemn violations of human rights and who hope for justice. They don't do this out of naiveté, for which Chechnya would be the place least apt, but because they can and want to do nothing else, because they are courageous, and because they do not deny themselves and their ideals, even if to do so would be easier for them and their families and would increase their life expectancies. From their faces, their strength, and their intrepidity, I wanted that beauty to grow that a film needs, even if it has to show all manner of terrible things. From the beginning, I was interested in seeing where and how the international system protects human rights. How 'morality' relates to realpolitik. Whether what happens on Europe's margins has something to do with us. If globalization is the mandate of our time, why shouldn't it also apply to the protection and application of human rights? I would have liked the film to end more confidently. It wasn't possible." Eric Bergkraut
Production: Doc Productions, Arte
Screenplay: Eric Bergkraut
Cinematographer: Laurent Stoop
Editor: Mireille Abramovici
Composer: Marie-Jeanne Serero
Format/screen ratio: 35mm, 1:1.78, Color
Running time: 86 min., 25 frames/sec.
Languages: Russian, Chechenian, German, English
