– The Flemish filmmaker chatted with us about his second documentary feature, which takes us to the heart of the war in Ukraine
Acclaimed in 2016 for The Land of Enlightenment [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], a first documentary film set in a conflict zone (Afghanistan), Pieter-Jan De Pue has been selected in the opening slot and in competition at CPH:DOX thanks to his second work, Mariinka [+see also:
film review
interview: Pieter-Jan De Pue
film profile], which takes a powerful narrative and aesthetic approach to look back on ten years of life in a now derelict small town on the eastern border of Ukraine, in a region torn apart by conflict, where young people mired down in the difficulties of daily life are fighting to find a glimmer of hope and their place in a world perpetually at war.
Cineuropa: How did this project come about?
Pieter-Jan De Pue: I shot my previous film in Afghanistan, the final sizeable chunk of which took place in 2014. A member of my crew, a Ukrainian called Serguei, was called up to serve in the army to fight in the Donbass. I did a bit of filming with him in Ukraine, where I also worked on a photography assignment for the Red Cross, and I found myself on both sides of the front line.
It was in Donetsk that I came across the story of four orphans, when I met Ruslan, who was fighting for Russia. He spoke to me about his brothers, especially Daniil who’d been adopted in the USA, and about Maksim and his disability. And about Mark too, who was fighting for Ukraine. It was an incredible story, and I started to dig deeper. I travelled to the orphanage where they grew up in Mariinka and met lots of other characters who were secondary to begin with, but who became lead characters in my story. From 2016 onwards, I started spending more time in Mariinka than in Belgium, and I really got to know that community. Until we were evacuated and the town was destroyed by the Russian army.
On that note, how did you widen the range of characters in your film?
I followed the trajectories of those brothers with a lot of interest, we even tracked Daniil down in the US, but we quickly realised the fight would never be over, regardless of whether the war ended or not; that they’d be fighting until their dying days. Obviously, it’s tragic, but running parallel to all that, we met two young women who also had a story to tell. At the time, Natacha was still at school, she belonged to a boxing club and was really determined, being the only girl among all those boys. Just as she was starting to study medicine, war broke out and she was sent to the front with the army’s medical corps. We followed her in battle too. But everyone is fighting their own fight in Mariinka. And all the young people know each other, that’s how I crossed paths with Angela, who – it turned out – smuggled contraband to survive. She told me such incredible stories, how she’d moved live fish and race horses across the border… All those things they no longer had access to due to the siege on Donetsk. There was so much material in her stories! So we decided to make a film portrait of Mariinka. To draw out a patchwork of stories and to turn Natacha into a kind of narrator, who doesn’t only talk about her own feelings but about the fate of the town, and about divided families in particular, which is a really common reality.
The film’s photography is very unique, given that it’s mostly shot on film but also that it incorporates drone footage, for example.
We filmed everything in 16mm. That’s what I did in Afghanistan. It’s a really organic medium, but it also makes you think very carefully ahead of time about what you want to film. I didn’t want to end up with hours of rushes or for us to lose our way in ten years’ worth of filming, so the aesthetic had to fit with the narrative requirements. Using film forces you to focus on the storyline, despite the fact we had to contend with a lot of unforeseen events, starting with Russia’s invasion in 2022 which forced us to rewrite the story right in the middle of the filming phase. The Land of Enlightenment was a fairly hybrid film, part fiction and part documentary. This one is far more documentarian, even though we worked with Angela in order to tell her story though flashbacks, and we re-shot a few of the smuggling scenes which couldn’t have happened again in real life. I didn’t want to make an exposé; obviously one of the characteristics of my work is that I try to create a purely cinematographic visual language, with a number of poetic layers. But everything we see and show is based on my protagonists’ reality, even if we sometimes rework it to bring their memories to life.
What was your greatest challenge?
In terms of the screenplay, obviously the 2022 invasion changed a lot of things, but I think that adding female protagonists to the film was one of the best decisions we made, because it widened the film’s perspective and really enriched the story. On the ground, we had to constantly review what we’d agreed with the army in terms of filming authorisations – the rules were changing constantly. Working with the brothers proved delicate too, Mark, in particular, has severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Some days, we had to take breaks, take a step back. It was quite unpredictable. Patience was essential. And it goes without saying that you can’t control what happens in wartime, so we had to be as flexible as possible.
(Translated from French)
