Rowley Doc 'Hell's Army' Premieres at CPH:DOX
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- "Hell's Army" premieres at CPH:DOX in Denmark, directed by Oscar-nominated Richard Rowley ("Dirty Wars") and framed as an investigation of the Wagner Group's global footprint.
- The documentary follows Russian journalist Katya Hakim as she tracks Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin across Ukraine, Syria, and the Central African Republic; Hakim has been placed on dangerous lists and seen colleagues killed or harmed by the mercenaries.
- Rowley built the film around access from veteran journalist Denis Korotkov — who first exposed Wagner in print — and the Dossier Center, an investigative project founded in 2017 by Russian activist and former political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
- Wagner fields 30,000 soldiers, "larger than most of the armies of Europe," and represents "the first private company to conquer a European city in 500 years," according to Rowley.
- Rowley frames the rise of mercenaries as a symptom of an "authoritarian turn in our global culture" and the death of the post-war liberal order, opening the film with an Antonio Gramsci quote about living between a world that is gone and one not yet built.
- Rowley draws a direct line to the United States, arguing that American military contractors operating in Iraq inspired the Kremlin to create Wagner and warning that shrinking media space in the U.S. mirrors Russia's "complete media control."
Why it matters: Rowley explicitly extends his warnings about Wagner-style mercenaries to the United States, arguing that U.S. contractors in Iraq inspired the Kremlin's creation of the group and that the U.S. media landscape is narrowing in ways that echo Russia. By centering a Russian dissident journalist as protagonist, the film also spotlights the physical costs facing reporters who investigate state-linked armed groups, with several of Korotkov and Hakim's colleagues killed or harmed.
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