The war still raging in Eastern Europe made a brutal reappearance at the world's largest film festival late Sunday, when a woman dressed in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag covered herself in fake blood on the red carpet, before a gala premiere. The brief protest, quickly evacuated by security, echoed an incident last year on the red carpet in which an activist stripped naked to reveal the words "Stop raping us" written on her chest next to a Ukrainian flag.
A protester dressed in the colors of the Ukrainian flag is covered in fake blood on the red carpet of Cannes. © Daniel Cole, AP
This year, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a much less discussed topic than in 2022, when President Volodymyr Zelensky opened the festival with a video speech urging filmmakers to challenge Russia, like Charlie Chaplin's "Dictator" against Adolf Hitler. Films directed by or about Ukrainians also featured prominently in the programming, including "Mariupolis 2" by Lithuanian Mantas Kvedaravičius, who paid with his life for his efforts to document the destruction of the city at the hands of Russian forces.
With the country's film industry now virtually at a standstill, the absence of Ukrainian films at this year's Cannes Film Festival comes as no surprise. But the subject has not completely disappeared. At the opening ceremony last week, French film icon Catherine Deneuve, who adorns this year's festival poster, recited a poem by Ukrainian Lessia Oukrainka, saying: "I no longer have happiness or freedom, only one hope has remained to me: To return one day to my beautiful Ukraine."
At the heart of the Palais des Festivals, the lung of this great mass of cinema, the Cannes Film Market hosted a series of events in favor of the Ukrainian film industry. Roundtables discussed topics such as filming during the war and the fight against Russian state-backed video piracy. Film projects in development have also received a lot of attention, including the feature film "Bucha", based on the true story of a Kazakh refugee who helped save dozens of civilian lives in the martyred city north of Kiev.
Fleeing Ukraine
Polish filmmakers have played a leading role in depicting the conflict unfolding on their doorstep, reflecting their country's increased exposure to the consequences of the Russian invasion. Among them is Lukasz Karwowski, whose film "Two Sisters" follows a duo of Polish half-sisters as they travel through war-torn Ukraine in search of their father.
"In the Rearview" by Maciek Hamela is the chronicle of a different kind of trip. It documents the mass exodus of Ukrainian civilians triggered by the invasion of Russia. Shot over a six-month period, the film follows the director's van through the war-torn country, as he picks up hundreds of refugees stranded by the conflict and drives them to safety.
As the film's title suggests, which means "rear view," Maciek Hamela's dash cam is primarily focused on the passengers in the back of the van, capturing their distress after harrowing experiences as they walk away from the fighting, leaving behind their sons, husbands and homes. Some passengers sit calmly, mute, stunned. Others tell stories of destruction, torture and death. There are also lighter moments, when these people let themselves go to share their hopes and aspirations when the war ends.
Outside, the camera sometimes captures elements of scenery of these fatal stories: charred vehicles, checkpoints and a multitude of surrounding dangers such as mines across the road or a bridge gutted by shelling, revealing the extent of the desolation.
This Polish-French-Ukrainian production was screened in Cannes as part of the ACID, a parallel section devoted to independent cinema. France 24 spoke with its director about the experience of shooting a film in a war zone and the Polish response to Europe's worst refugee crisis since the Second World War.
Polish Maciek Hamela, 40, at the 76th Cannes Film Festival. © Benjamin Dodman, France 24
Can you tell us about the early days of the war and why you crossed the Ukrainian border?
Maciek Hamela: From the beginning of the war, I started raising funds for the Ukrainian army in Warsaw. Very few people believed that Ukraine could survive the war. There was a mass exodus of refugees who suddenly landed at the border. It was freezing cold and the Polish government was unprepared. On the third day of the war, I bought a van and went to the border.
When I arrived, I realized I wasn't the only one. Hundreds of people had the same idea. I took people at random and took them to my apartment and my friends' apartments. That is how we avoided the scenario that would have led to them being held in refugee camps.
After a few days, we organized ourselves on the Signal [messaging app], to find apartments, humanitarian aid, transportation, etc. I was fluent in Ukrainian, so I crossed the border. From there, it all came together. My phone number appeared somewhere on Telegram and people started calling me from all kinds of countries, asking me to pick up their relatives stranded in Ukraine. I moved closer to the front line and started doing shorter evacuations from villages to big cities and evacuation trains.
How did you find your way in Ukraine?
The beginning of the war was very difficult. There was no information, no maps, no journalists; we didn't know where the Russians were. We could travel 200 kilometres and discover that a bridge had been destroyed, and then we had to go all the way back to find another road. I relied on the people I met along the way for information about roads, checkpoints, and where the Russians were.
When and why did you decide to start filming your evacuations?
At the end of March, I decided that I could not continue to move forward alone for very long. It exhausted me, especially driving at night. So I asked a close friend, who happened to be a cinematographer and also a very good driver, to help me and we decided to take a camera.
We didn't know it was going to be a movie. But I knew that what was being said in the car was a unique testament to what these people are going through and the process in which people become refugees. Is it the time you cross the border or the last time you see your house? It is at this point in the journey that one begins to become aware of the situation, and this process is reflected in the conversations.
How did people react to the camera?
I was very surprised at how much the camera motivated some of these people to tell their stories. Some had been exposed day and night to Russian propaganda, especially in the occupied territories. They wanted to talk to the world and the camera was the world.
We feel that the danger is crescendo in the film as the proximity of the war becomes more and more obvious. How did you structure your film? Wasn't it scary to drive into a combat zone?
We wondered how to maintain the tension for the duration of the film while being almost entirely in the car. That's why we built this crescendo, both in the structure and in the stories of the passengers. Of course, there were many terrifying moments, but we decided to leave out the more dramatic ones. This is not a film about the dangers of driving in war-torn territories. I do not wish to compare my experience to that of soldiers who fight.
Were you surprised by the scale of the humanitarian response in Poland?
I think everyone was surprised. I thought I would be one of the few people at the border, but I saw long lines of cars, ordinary people picking up refugees and taking them home. It was striking to see how responsive and mobilized society was at the beginning of the war.
There is no particular brotherhood between Poles and Ukrainians, we had a sometimes difficult past. But we also have a common experience: for centuries, we have lived in the shadow of a hungry neighbor, of imminent danger hanging over our heads. This made us understand that this war is also ours.
This article was adapted from English. Find the original article here.
Cannes © Film Festival Graphic Studio France Media World
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