Ukrainian directors fight and shoot on the front lines

Some of Ukraine’s most talented filmmakers are now on the front lines, using their cameras (and sometimes guns) to fight the Russian invasion.

Oleh Sentsov, Director of the Venice Film Festival 2021 rhinoThis week, he posted a photo of Donbass on Facebook, where he poses in costume. rhino Star Sergei Filimonov with the caption “Rhinos are at war”.

Sentsov and Philemonov were among the members of the Ukrainian film industry who applied on February 24 after Russia invaded their country. Sentsov was scheduled to travel to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week to talk about his experiences, but he will stay. In the trenches and through the word Zoom.

Serkhiy Lysenko, director of the 2019 documentary brothers with gunsHe also enlisted after the Russian invasion, but is now recruiting for the Ukrainian army.

“The army does not allow journalists to join them because there is a danger that they will reveal their whereabouts or movement and because there is evidence that the Russians were attacking journalists during the war,” said Denis Ivanov, a Ukrainian producer. Saturday Leather Producers Network.

Other Ukrainian filmmakers, including director Valentin Vasyanovich (Reflection, atlantisProducer/Director Olga Beshmelnitsina (A-N-A, land of ivan) and PDO Serhi Mihalchuk (Გდ, under electric clouds), work on documenting events on the ground, recording the history of the war in real time. Babylon 13, an independent film crew formed in 2013 at the start of the Ukrainian uprising, created the 2015 documentary series. The winter that changed usRenovated after the Russian invasion.

“We are still mobilized and are back to the active process of filming social events in Ukraine,” said Igor Savichenko, co-founder of Babylon’13. the hollywood reporter WhatsApp via kyiv. Members of the group, many of whom work anonymously, take pictures in the war zone and offer free news channels outside the country.

Some of the work is horrible: Beshmelnitsina short film Occupant, which he posted on YouTube, are images compiled from videos found on a Russian soldier’s cell phone, which he was taking as the country advanced. Instead, documentary filmmaker Alina Gorlova is doing an art project about Ukrainian farmers working to clear their Russian minefields as they try to plant the next crop.

“All these stories, dramatic and common, are important and part of our fight to win this war,” Ivanov said. “It is important that the world understands our history and not the history of Russia, a country that is trying to destroy us.