Ivanna Khitsinska’s highly pertinent documentary project Company of Steel chronicles life during wartime since the commencement of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014, when three young Ukrainian men with no military experience set out to serve their country, fighting on the frontline before returning to civilian life.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 they were forced back to the frontline and had to confront once more the trauma they had been trying hard to overcome. The producers refer to the film as “a self-sacrificing story of modern Ukrainians, through the prism of three colourful characters.”
“This film shows why Ukrainians are so brave and tells the story of our people, our generation,” producer Ivanna Khitsinska tells Business Doc Europe. “These soldiers, these volunteers are my generation. It’s the young generation which went to war when they were 18 or 19 years old and now these guys are nearly 30 and almost a third part of their life was at war.”
“We have had such an observation for eight years,” she adds. “I think that not every country has [had] such a long war in our times. But we don’t want to make one more film about war. We want to make a film about people and the impact of war on people, but to say that life is more powerful than war. That life will win every time.”
The Babylon`13/VFS Films production is budgeted at €229,627 with €44,608 still to be raised. The filmmakers are looking for financing for post-production, a sales agent, distributors and broadcasters. The film will be ready for delivery in December, so right now Khitsinska is also looking for a festival premiere. “We hope that we will have the premiere in one of the winter A-festivals. Every filmmaker dreams it,” she says.
Khitsinska is an avowed admirer of director Hontaruk who has been embedded with her subjects in the frontline trenches throughout the war. These are soldiers who live closed lives and don’t relish the prospect of their every movement, action and conversation being recorded. But Hontaruk was able to win their trust, Khitsinska underlines.
“These were guys who were not like original soldiers – people from different spheres of life like football fans, a TV showman, a just graduated engineer, teachers…She stayed with them and made this observation and slept there with and went through special military tasks with them.”
“Yuliia is really an amazing person, a brave woman,” Khitsinska adds. “I don’t know she found this strength to go to war when she was 25-years-old, to stay in one base with the soldiers, when there were 100 men and she was the only woman…That’s why we can see the life of the soldiers from their point of view. And it’s a very open point of view because they are talking with her like friends.”
