Pieter-Jan De Pue’s new film Mariinka (sold by Films Boutique and opening CPH:DOX) is the culmination of a full decade of work. The eastern Ukrainian city of the title, which De Pue first visited back in 2014, was destroyed by the Russians after their full-scale invasion in February 2022. The scope of the documentary has changed dramatically since then.
When De Pue was pitching it originally, the doc was called Four Brothers and focused on the experiences of four siblings who had been growing up in an orphanage. Two, Mark and Ruslan, had ended on different sides in the war, fighting each other.
“Before the full-scale invasion, we had the story of the four brothers which we thought was very interesting and the producers believed in that,” the Belgian director recalls of the original concept.
At the time, tensions between the Russians and Ukrainians were already apparent. Clashes were taking place but there was “a stable front line.” However, after February 2022, De Pue realised that he needed to broaden the canvas. “So much more was going on,” he explains why the film also began to focus on other characters including Natasha, a paramedic for the Ukrainian army, and Angela, who was eking out an existence by smuggling.
“They were side characters who I was following already in the sidelines between the four brothers. I was filming them from time to time because I thought their story was interesting. But when the full-scale invasion happened, first of all Mariinka got destroyed and the characters of Natasha and Angela started evolving at a very fast pace.”
Natasha, who had grown up an orphan, had been a student of medical sciences and a boxing champion. Now, she enlisted as a medic in the army. Meanwhile, Angela was smuggling on the frontline in ever more dangerous circumstances. Much more now seemed at stake.
The four Zolotko brothers still feature prominently. They’ve all faced huge upheaval in their lives. The youngest, Samuel, has been adopted and is living in Mississippi. Maksim, a once promising footballer who had signed for Shakhtar Donetsk, is wheelchair bound after a motorcycle accident. Ruslan joined the Russian army and Mark is fighting for Ukraine.
For the director himself, this turned into a very emotional journey. “We have been shooting this project for almost 10 years. I’m not going to say Mariinka was a second home but I was living with some of the characters. I was close with their family members.”
Now, when De Pue looks back over the footage he shot, he feels some of the same anguish as his protagonists. “It touched me directly as well,” he states. “That’s why we share a common understanding with the characters who lost everything. I can imagine very well what they lost.”
Mariinka has turned into “a land full of rubble…there is nothing that stands there,” he adds.
What took him there in the first place? De Pue explains that one of the crew members on his previous, Afghanistan-set project, The Land of the Enlightened, was from Ukraine. This man was mobilised after the Maidan revolution in Donbas in 2014 because he had military experience. Meanwhile, the Red Cross, for whom De Pue had taken photographs in Afghanistan, asked the director to provide images of the conflict in Donbas. “I started taking pictures at both sides – at the Ukraine controlled territory and at the separatist controlled territory.”
During this period, De Pue discovered the story of the brothers fighting for opposing armies. Over the years, the director was often more in touch with Ruslan than with Mark because he “realised Mark had some psychological traumas. It was very hard to work with him.”
Ruslan may have been on the Russian side but he was “pretty accessible” and trusted De Pue to tell his story honestly.
There is, though, a disturbing coda to the film. Ruslan (who began to serve with the Wagner Group after the full scale invasion) has been missing in action since November last year, and the director has lost all contact with him. Mark, meanwhile, has been almost permanently on the front line and hard to reach.
“Discussions were even more sensitive than they were before the full-scale invasion. I think that added to why we started to focus much more on the girls.”
As in Land of the Enlightened, the film is shot in very lyrical fashion with some breathtaking imagery of the landscapes. .”It’s my way of storytelling. Of course, it was a very bleak story in a very depressing grey area. On top of that, I didn’t want to bring another story [to screen] that was talking about destruction, division. I like to play with nature, with beautiful elements…”
The film opens with a symbolic baptising of Natasha in an ice-filled river during the annual January “Blessing of the Water” celebrations. Everyone is wearing traditional clothes and there is a strong sense of ancient ritual.
De Pue had very close access to his subjects. In the US, he was welcomed by the family in Mississippi who had adopted Samuel. One reason they were so open to him was that they were struggling to explain to Samuel what was happening back in Ukraine. “They did not really know everything. Since we were in touch with the brothers and with the biological mother, I think for them it was a way they could explain to him through the film what was going on.”
The biological mother was evacuated to Belgium after the full-scale invasion. She likewise saw the filmmakers as a bridge to her sons.
As for the harrowing scenes on the front line with Natasha and the wounded soldiers she tends, he attributes his access there to his “very good relationship” with the 59th Brigade who allowed him to film at his own risk.
Mariinka was produced by Bart Van Langendonck of Savage Film with support from, among others, Submarine in the Netherlands, Beetz Brothers in Germany and Dark Riviera in Sweden. These partners had to show a lot of patience. The documentary was originally expected to be completed by 2022 – but the original plans were ripped up after the full-scale invasion.
“In the end we got there,” the director says of a very long gestation project that CPH: DOX Director Niklas Engstrøm has hailed as “a remarkable cinematic achievement” and that has already been picked up by distributors in multiple territories.
Mariinka is one of six European documentaries selected for the EUROPE! Docs programme, devised by EFP and CPH:DOX.
