Yahoo News Polish Director Maciek Hamela On Making Ukrainian Doc ‘In The Rearview’: “What We Are Really Documenting Is First-Hand Witness Accounts Of War Crimes” – Cannes
EXCLUSIVE: When millions of Ukrainians fled to the Polish border after the Russian invasion last year, Maciek Hamela, whose film In the Rearview is debuting in the Cannes market this week, was one of a number of volunteers who drove to help assist multiple generations of Ukrainian civilians in fleeing the life-threatening conflict.
“When I first went to the border it was because I heard that there were thousands of refugees with no buses or anything,” he says. “So, I just thought I would go along with some friends and when I arrived there was a line of cars from Warsaw and all the big cities in Poland who were there to pick up anyone who was arriving. There was no kind of refugee camp on the border that you often find in situations like this, which was pretty amazing.”
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Since the war broke out on February 24, 2022, more than 11 million Ukrainians have crossed the Polish border, with some 1.5 million of them still living in Poland. It’s a common effort, says Hamela, that has really “energized the society.”
“We were all taken by surprise by how many people got involved in various ways, such as sharing their apartments and their beds but also going to the border,” he says.
Hamela says he had a very “humane reflex” to keep returning to the border to pick up refugees and the idea of filming a documentary about the experience came after three weeks of doing these drives.
“I invited a friend who is a DoP who brought in a camera and we started documenting,” Hamela says. “We thought it could be used as testimony in some kind of process trial like in The Hague. What we are really documenting is first hand witness accounts of war crimes.”
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In the Rearview, which will debut as part of the Cannes ACID (Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema) program, is a Polish-French-Ukrainian production that documents the deeply emotional and personal losses of multiple generations of families fleeing their home country. It explores the consequences of war on communities and the collective sense of uncertainty tinged with hope as these individuals and families attempt to escape the war.
During the first days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the van traverses thousands of miles and serves as a waiting room, hospital, shelter and zone for confidences and confessions, which are shared among travelers thrown together by chance.
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The documentary is shot over a period of six months and Hamela says he has personally helped more than 400 people flee danger, taking some into Poland and driving others to safe places in Ukraine. Because Hamela spoke Russian, it meant he was better equipped to transport people through Ukraine.
There were, of course, some hairy moments driving through a war zone. “We came under shelling a few times,” Hamela says, but these are moments he purposefully left out of the film because “there are a lot of films documenting the war now and that are shot on GoPros in the trenches – this isn’t that kind of movie.”
Hamela says that the Polish response to the Ukraine war is something that is bound by history.
“We are two nations who, for centuries have been living in the shadow of this huge neighbor with totalitarian regimes switching from one to another,” he says. “And we perfectly understand what the situation in Ukraine is. The collapse of the Soviet Union started in Poland – we had the solidarity movement and my parents were involved in it. I remember us having police raids in our house and I remember from my childhood years these accounts of mass protests that were brutally squelched by the political police here and this was all done on orders from Moscow. Being born behind the Iron Curtain I think helps a lot to understand the situation that Ukrainians are in right now.”
For Hamela, he hopes that In the Rearview will show audiences about the experience of becoming a refugee where “anyone from any country could imagine himself or herself in one of these seats in the van.”
Cinephil is shopping the project to buyers here in Cannes. Check out the exclusive clip from the film above.
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