A Canberra-Berlin film producer has been in Cannes this week at the Marché du Film representing a film that has become accidentally notorious.

Karl Hillbrick, a former volunteer firefighter and Duke of Edinburgh gold awardee raised in Kambah and schooled at Trinity Christian school and Lake Tuggeranong College, now has a flourishing career as a producer in Berlin with the company Infilmpact.

He has emailed “CityNews” from Cannes about the drama short, “Nadija,” (released as “Hope” in English) which was repurposed by Russian trolls as proof that the Ukraine war was fake.

Filmed in Latvia by emerging Ukrainian director Artem Kocharian, who had moved there in February 2022 at the start of the war, the film is based on a true story and tells the story of a pregnant Ukrainian girl left alone after her family was killed in the ongoing war after Russia’s invasion.

Hillbrick, who believes the film is an authentic story of resilience and hope, says that after Kocharian posted images of the film process of TikTok several weeks ago, “desperate” Russian trollers began sharing video excerpts showing men in uniforms carrying weapons as they enter a building while a camera crew films them, proof, they claimed, that the war in Ukraine was “staged propaganda.”

As if that weren’t enough, during filming “Nadija”, a production vehicle was closely inspected following a traffic incident, revealing a boot-load of what were subsequently confirmed as firearm props.

The “fake news” representation of “Nadija” has received wide publicity in Europe and now co-producers Hillbrick and Julia Kabitsyna-Cabiere have been in Cannes pitching the film to buyers, broadcasters and streamers at the famous Marché, one of the largest film markets in the world.

The trailer for “Nadija” is here