Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov sits in a brightly lit Kiev condominium, with his wife Veronika at his side, her hand cupping his right ear. “What? What? What?” he says, asking Selection to repeat the query. More than two years on the front lines of Ukraine’s conflict with Russia have offered Sentsov little chance for levity, but he allows himself a mischievous smile. After suffering, by his own account, “six bruises and two perforations” to his right eardrum, the director lost much of his hearing. He may or may not return. Sentsov shrugs. He knows that many of his Ukrainian comrades have suffered far worse fates.
To some extent, it’s driven home by the director’s latest film, “Actual,” a snapshot documentary of the conflict in Ukraine that has its world premiere with a special screening at the Karlovy Differ Film Festival. Described as an “unintentional” film, the 88-minute film is comprised exclusively of footage filmed by Sentsov in a trench in the Donbass area of Ukraine after a nearby unit was ambushed by Russian forces.
It’s a chilling glimpse into a fleeting moment in a conflict that has cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians since it began. Reliving that day remains a struggle for Sentsov, 47, a father of four who hopes to return to the front soon. “It’s hard to watch at first, but it’s an immersive experience,” he says. “There is nothing false about it. They are raw materials.”
The director is talking to Selection on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the battle shown in “Real”. Two days later, he will go to the widows of several soldiers who were killed that day by Russian troops. Her navy blue bob, arching into a tall widow’s peak, turned gray; so did the goatee framing his square jaw. When asked what it’s like to live in Kiev, surrounded by his wife and children, his answer is concise and military. “It’s louder than other places,” he says. “I’m often in a nasty situation, so here’s a sweet treat.”
“Real” was filmed on the tenth day of a Ukrainian counteroffensive last June in the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia. Sentsov’s unit was struggling to get past the Russian line of defense, but that morning he received orders to penetrate deeper into Russian-occupied territory. As commander, Sentsov again rushed to reinforce his unit’s defenses with more troops and supplies, but a small detachment of Ukrainian soldiers was cut off at a place called Royal. “They were surrounded by Russians on all sides,” he says.
Separated by more than a kilometer of no man’s land and under a continuous barrage of Russian artillery, Sentsov was the one who managed to talk to the isolated unit, and his pleas for help became more plaintive as the day went on. The siege lasted from approximately 4am to 8am that night; Sentsov began recording around 8 a.m., his camera sweeping back and forth along the ditch where he and his unit were buried, as a soldier on the other end of the radio called for reinforcements. It was a stroke of pure luck that the scene was captured when Sentsov arrived to change his helmet, unintentionally turning on his GoPro, which he recorded until the battery ran out. It will be six months before he realizes he has produced an eyewitness account of the conflict that began with Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
His preliminary impulse was to delete the footage. After watching it, however, he sent it to his longtime producer, Denis Ivanov — his collaborator on “Rhino,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2021 — as well as to other civilians who did not experience the conflict. in first hand. He wasn’t sure if the footage had any cinematic value, but they impressed on him that what he had captured was “a true and reliable reportage” and “a real document of the conflict.” Ivanov would continue to produce “Actual” through his Arthouse Visitors banner, in co-production with Boris T. Matić and Lana Matić of Croatia’s Propeller Movie and UK veteran Mike Downey of Downey Ink. Sentsov, who shares production credit, also helped with coloring and sound, holed up in a post-production studio in Kiev during his rare breaks from joining.
Sentsov filmed “Actual” after accidentally turning on his GoPro in the heat of battle.
Courtesy of Arthouse visitors
Most of “Real” takes place in just a few square feet in the trench where Sentsov and his comrades were hiding, radioing the beleaguered unit as images of gunfire and artillery explosions blared off camera. It’s an unusual and disheartening viewing experience, one that the director says reflects, in no small way, the experience of fighting oneself. “If you are in conflict, you are basically blind. Ninety percent of the data is collected from sounds,” he says. “There is a helicopter, there are images of artillery, there may be fighting, there may be screams. All this data your mind gathers not by seeing objects, but by observing the sounds around you. It was essential to point this out.”
Despite having no military experience before the Russian invasion, Sentsov became battle-hardened after more than two years on the front lines. On the day Russian forces crossed the border, he joined the voluntary Territorial Protection of Ukraine, but within months he left to join the special forces, telling a reporter to the world that the volunteer unit was “too boring for (their) style.”
He posts regularly about the conflict on social media, recounting his many struggles with death, paying tribute to fallen comrades, and cataloging the physical and emotional toll of the conflict. “It was difficult to write all this down yesterday after a fierce battle,” he wrote after a difficult escape last fall. “It’s hard to write it down at the moment, when you’re already sure. It will be hard to write it down tomorrow, when everything will be reminiscences and nightmares.” In another post, he wrote: “You only truly feel life when death passes you by.”
Since making his debut as a filmmaker with the 2011 drama “Gamer,” Sentsov’s life and career have been incessantly sidetracked by geopolitical developments in his troubled region. In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbass area, Sentsov – a native of Crimea – was arrested by Russian authorities on the basis of fabricated terrorism expenses and sentenced to twenty years in a penal colony near the Arctic Circle. . The director vigorously denied the accusations, launching a hunger strike that lasted 145 days, while a global campaign for its release attracted a coalition of governments, rights groups, body traders, literary luminaries and stars. from Hollywood.
Sentsov was released in 2019, after more than five years in a Russian penal colony.
NurPhoto via Getty Photos
In September 2019, he was released as part of a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine, and just a few months later Sentsov walked the red carpet at the Berlin Film Festival with his dystopian drama “Numbers” – a film he wrote. improbably and co-directed while behind bars. He then filmed “Rhino,” a legal drama set in the Ukrainian underworld in the 1990s, hoping to close a turbulent chapter in his life and make a fresh start. When he appeared at the Lido for the film’s Venice premiere, he instructed Selection he was able to “follow a civilian life” and leave the events of a tumultuous decade behind.
Once again, however, the historical past intervened. While Sentsov hopes to be at Karlovy Differ when “Real” premieres, there’s no telling what the conflict is at retail; in Ukraine, he says, it’s impossible to plan more than a week in advance. It’s also too early to decide when he’ll return to film, though he has at least two options — including his English-language debut, “Shining World” — currently in the works. “Now, I am a soldier. I’m in the fight and I do what I have to do,” he says. “However, I am sure that sooner or later I will make films.”
Until then, he remains focused on the daily battle of defending his homeland, defending his troops and living to see his family again in Kiev, along with a child born after the Russian invasion. As he recently posted on Facebook: “Having a home where your family is waiting for you offers a whole different level of motivation here on the front lines. Exactly who you are risking your life for, you know exactly who you must survive for.”