At this year’s CPH:DOX Rough Cut session director Pieter-Jan De Pue unveiled a deeply personal and visually arresting project that has been nearly a decade in the making. Four Brothers [working title], a powerful 120-minute documentary, tells the story of four orphaned siblings growing up in war-ravaged Eastern Ukraine.
Moderated by Dani Carlow of Screen Scotland, the presentation gave industry professionals a first glimpse at the raw emotional terrain and stunning 16mm footage that define the film.
De Pue is an independent filmmaker affiliated with Belgium’s Savage Film. A graduate of the RITS film academy in Brussels, he began working in Afghanistan in 2007, directing his debut feature documentary The Land of the Enlightened and photographing for organisations such as the International Red Cross, Caritas International, and the United Nations. The Land of the Enlightened premiered at the Sundance in 2016.
De Pue showed a first teaser introducing the four Zolotko brothers – one fighting for the Russian Army, one for the Ukrainian army, another forced to recover after a serious injury, and the youngest now living in the USA. At the beginning of the story the latter was aged 14, and is now almost 19.
Since 2014, the Zolotko brothers have struggled to survive in their destroyed hometown of Marinka. As conflict consumes their environment, the brothers’ paths diverge in these unexpected ways.
“This story intrigued me from the moment I heard about families torn apart by war, and that of two brothers fighting on opposite sides of the conflict,” the helmer said. The project has been in the works for eight years, after De Pue first heard about the Zolotkos in 2017. In 2019, it was pitched at CPH:Forum, where it scooped the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award.
Interestingly, the film also introduces Natasha, a young woman from Marinka who, like the brothers, lost her family to the war. Now working as a paramedic for the Ukrainian army, she brings a parallel perspective on resilience and service. A second teaser shown at the session highlighted her journey.
Shot in increasingly tough conditions, Four Brothers captures both the intimate rhythms of this fractured family and the broader devastation that has reshaped Ukraine. “In the beginning, it was already hard, but since Russia’s full-scale invasion, it became almost impossible to film the full story. But we did and managed to capture beautiful images,” De Pue underscored.
The documentary, a co-production between Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany, is being produced by Dark Riviera AB and Savage Film, with Submarine, beetz brothers film production GmbH and Naoko Films attached as the co-producers. With a total budget of €1.4 million, the team has already secured monies from a wide array of backers including the Flemish Audiovisual Fund (VAF), Eurimages, Creative Europe Media, ZDF-Arte, and the Swedish Film Institute and Netherlands Film Fund, among others.
Currently in the final stages of editing, the team is seeking backing to cover final post-production costs, including those associated with the film’s distinctive 16mm format. They are actively looking for sales agents, pre-sales, and festival partners ahead of the slated release of September 2025.
Four Brothers promises to be not just a war documentary, but a poetic exploration of identity, loyalty, and the meaning of family in a world broken by violence. As De Pue and his collaborators put the finishing touches on what promises to be a significant international release, the project stands as a timely and deeply affecting chronicle of survival and transformation.
