In the Rearview – Maciek Hamela | #film

In the Rearview – Maciek Hamela

This documentary film about Ukrainian refugees is an indictment of war, a humble story of loss, fear and the victims of war, seducing in its simplicity. The film was in competition for awards in the Polish Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival and was also screened in the ACID section of the Cannes Film Festival.

‘Let’s not talk about the cow anymore, or you'll start crying again’ – says a 40-year-old man to his mother, an elderly woman, talking about the world each of them has had to leave behind. They are travelling in a minibus driven by a Polish volunteer to get away from the front line and seek a safe haven in other parts of Ukraine or in faraway parts of Europe. In Maciek Hamela’s film we meet many of them. There is a father with a daughter only a few years old, who cowers in fear at the sound of planes flying overhead. An optimistic pregnant woman in her twenties, who has hired herself out as a surrogate to open her dream patisserie with the money she earns after giving birth to two more children. Finally, an African immigrant shot by the Russians, for whom Ukraine has become a second home.

The film In the Rearview was born out of solidarity. Its history dates back to 2013. It was then, during the events of the Kyiv Maydan, that Maciek Hamela decided to travel to Ukraine to show support for people fighting for the freedom of their country. While there, he made a film about one of the defenders of Mariupol – a young warrior captured by the invading forces. When the Russians launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hamela decided to return: he bought a van and volunteered to transport refugees. He recalls:

A week later, I was already driving around Ukraine itself, offering transport not only from Kyiv or larger cities but also from remote corners of the country from where there was no other way to go. […] I also started to cooperate with international aid organisations in evacuating people in extremely difficult situations: pregnant women, disabled people, and foreigners.

Within months of the Russian assault on Kyiv, he managed to evacuate more than 400 people. In time, the idea for a film was born, which would document the fate of those transported and become a record of the war drama that encompassed Ukraine.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

'In the Rearview' – Maciek Hamela, photo: PISF

Picture image

skad_dokad_maciej_hamela.jpg

Among the images captured by Hamela’s camera, one is particularly shocking. Here, a ten-year-old girl fleeing with her family from a dangerous area puzzles her fellow travellers: with a mathematics textbook, she questions them about one maths problem after another, looking for a topic other than war. After a while, she starts talking about it too – in a joking tone, she talks about the inevitability of her own death, about air raids that could end her short life at any second. In Hamela’s film, these words almost become evidence of a crime. Just like the villages and towns that pass by, razed to the ground, the burnt-out tanks standing on the roadsides, the words of the little girl show the power of the destruction that took away people’s possessions, their sense of security and, for the youngest ones, the innocence of childhood.

Hamela is not only the director but also the protagonist of the film. He is the one behind the wheel of the van in which the refugees travel. But in the film, he keeps himself in the shadows. We only see him when his presence becomes necessary – at Ukrainian checkpoints, when the car needs repairs or quick supplies are needed. Hamela’s screen absence is a conscious choice by the director and also relates to his role as a filmmaker. Throughout In the Rearview, he relies on the simplicity of the story. In his film, one looks in vain for showy montages, directorial volte-face or formal experimentation. Instead, there is a camera looking into the eyes of people forced to flee, to listen to what they have to say.

The director knows perfectly well that a documentary needs nothing more: in the eyes of people who have left loved ones behind, who have set off into the unknown full of fear of what lies behind them and hope for what lies ahead, he finds the deepest truth about the war in Ukraine. The small, private truth of the individual. And it is this simplicity that is the great strength of Hamela’s film. It makes us, as viewers, touch the truth of human emotions and human lives. In Hamela’s In the Rearview, war is seen through the eyes of civilians. There are no patriotic spectacles, no heroic tales of soldierly deeds, but portraits of terrified people who have had their life’s possessions and the remnants of their sense of security taken from them. And although In the Rearview is a heartbreakingly sad film, it brings hope for a better tomorrow for Ukraine and its heroes.

In the Rearview (Polish title: Skąd Dokąd) / Directed by: Maciek Hamela. Cinematography: Yura Dunay, Wawrzyniec Skoczylas, Marcin Sierakowski, Piotr Grawender. Editing: Piotr Ogiński. Music: Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz. Premiere: 12.05.2023.