The paper discusses a study of aesthetics – an encounter with the subliminal – as a means to analyse politics of compassion in Chechnya through documentary and fictional films. The paper discusses first the study of emotions and compassion in war and argues that war experience is more than just trauma, anger, resentment and fear. Inner and interpersonal dialogues of compassion are discovered in sound, movement and silence. The paper the discusses how the aesthetic approach affects perception and reveals findings which are at the outskirts of a state-centric discipline of IR.
