Dialogues on War/ Діалоги про війну. Iryna Tsilyk and Agnieszka Holland

Agnieszka Holland: I first met Ira during the Cannes Film Festival. We spent probably ten days together on the documentary jury. She came there directly from war-torn Kyiv with her son. Her husband is in the army. We were walking on the red carpets every day, drinking champagne, and listening to quite indecent comments from the audience when people tried to make a demonstration in support of Ukrainians. When I was watching you, Ira, I had the impression that you were in the matrix: unable to fully enjoy the experience because your head and your heart were in another place. Since you came back to Kyiv, I have mostly been following you on social media, where you are fortunately quite active. How was the beginning of the war for you? How was this short break at Cannes? Where are you today?

Iryna Tsilyk: I am very happy to see you, dear Agnieszka. You and your colleagues saved me in Cannes. You are right: I felt very surreal, very weird. It was the first time I left Ukraine since the full-scale invasion started, and I immediately dove into this world of diamonds, chic red carpets, and careless people.
We just came to Cannes directly from Kyiv. I thought we were not traumatised, but we were. During the festival, I had a couple of strange moments. For instance, I had a panic attack during an action for Top Gun: Maverick, when I saw these eight planes performing an air show in the sky. Probably, I did not look normal. That is because I am not.

This war has changed us on different levels, even on very subtle ones. When I observe children around me, including my son, I understand that this new generation of Ukrainians has been living in the war-torn country for the majority of their lives. They are different. For example, my son is trying to hide under the mask of a sceptical attitude. But I know that he is trying to protect himself. Everything around is too frustrating and painful. His father is in the army, for the second time during these years.

During the first eight years of the war, I actively took part in everything related to the topic. I was drawn as a magnet to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. To someone, it may seem like I was hunting for a “hot” topic or a special plot. This is not true. The fact is that it was impossible to live my normal life in peaceful Kyiv and avoid the realisation that the war was going on in the east of Ukraine. I used every chance to go there, to meet people, to listen to their stories and tell them to others.

I shot two short documentaries about women who defend Ukraine for the Invisible Battalion project. I made films about the famous Ukrainian paramedic Taira and stormtrooper Andriana Susak with the nickname ‘Kid’. This year, Taira was captured by the Russians. Thank God, she is liberated.

The Earth Is Blue As An Orange was my attempt to understand what it means to be a civilian in a war zone. I had huge empathy for my characters, mother Hanna and her four children, who lived in the war zone and tried to live their lives to the fullest despite everything. When the full-scale Russian invasion started, when the war came to my city, my Kyiv, when I got a chance to step into my character’s shoes, I suddenly found myself speechless and powerless. I still feel very confused and imbalanced.

For us artists and filmmakers who try to observe other people’s lives, it is important to have some distance between us and our characters, our stories. When we are in the epicentre of the events, it is impossible to look at the situation from above.

Agnieszka Holland: Now the circumstances are less strange, you are at home in your apartment. It looks so peaceful and normal. I know that Kyiv right now is quieter than in the first two months. The theatre of war has moved to the east and the south of Ukraine. You are not reminded every single minute that the war is around. What does your day look like?

Iryna Tsilyk: It sounds weird, but Kyiv looks completely peaceful now. Of course, it is not. We still have these air raid sirens and the chance of possible missile attacks. Just half an hour ago, my son was coming back from school when the air raid alarm went off. He was taking a tram and it stopped. And he, together with other passengers, was just waiting for it to end, without even hiding. It has become a weird routine for many relatively peaceful cities like Kyiv and Lviv. The situation is completely different in Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and other eastern and southern cities suffering from missile attacks almost every day.

What is my day like? I wake up and text my husband who is in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. I miss him so much… I discovered that I cannot live my life fully while he is there. I know for a fact that there are so many other women like me, who have put their lives on standby waiting for their men, and also men who are waiting for their women. This time, so many people whom I know personally joined the army. So many artists, filmmakers, writers, composers, etc. are defending Ukraine. Some people became volunteers and paramedics, and others work and donate their earnings for the needs of the army. It seems like everyone around me is involved. We are trying our best. We have to do something, we have to fight on different fronts.
Agnieszka Holland: We, people who live outside of Ukraine, especially in Poland (even though I spent the last five months in France), have been feeling like most Ukrainians during the Crimea annexation and the beginning of the war in Donbas. The war is here, but it is kind of far away at the same time. You can distance yourself and still have some kind of a normal life.

I cannot state that the world has forgotten about the war in Ukraine. But talking about it did become a routine, a ceremonial necessity. You feel powerless in front of this war and the future, except for when you are helping the Ukrainian army. I have friends in Poland who are organising supplies of both humanitarian and military aid. My friends and I organised a fundraiser to buy a Bayraktar for Ukraine. If somebody told me a year ago that I would be spending my time convincing people to donate their money for a lethal weapon, I would never believe that.

We must simplify our emotions. We have to perceive the world as black and white, and this is something so much against my beliefs. The message of my films is that the world is complicated, and everything is ambiguous. People’s characters are full of grey zones where the good and the bad are constantly fighting. However, this kind of thinking is inadequate concerning this war. It is difficult to accept for many people in the West, including those working in the creative industry. They do not understand that Inter arma, silent Musae – when arms are speaking, muses are silent.

Serhiy Zhadan, a great Ukrainian writer and poet, recently came to Poland. During one of the interviews, he said the same thing you are saying now: he does not have any need or motivation to write poetry. Your case, however, is different. It is kind of a Penelope situation [Penelope is a character in Homer’s Odyssey, the wife of Odysseus – ed.] We know Odyssey from Odysseus’ point of view, but we know nothing about it according to Penelope. Now, when women are active, when we are taking real responsibility in this war, describing and expressing women’s experiences is extremely important. I understand that it may be difficult for you to do right now. When the war ends – and it will, hopefully, end sooner than we expect – you have to make a film about it. I know you will. Do not feel guilty about not expressing your creative needs. Just be open, let yourself feel, and do not escape from the depth of this experience.

Iryna Tsilyk: You are right. Probably, a lot depends on the tools that we use in art. Some arts have the magic power to stop this “here-and-now” energy. Poetry, in my opinion, is one of the most magical tools, and it is a pity that Zhadan cannot write anything at the moment. But some poets can, and they create fantastic things trying to grab the moment, to stop it, to reflect on all the factors that change us today. We do change extremely fast, and this metamorphosis is very important to document.

Writers who write novels, and directors who create fiction movies need distance when approaching a topic like this. It is difficult to be objective when you see the situation in a close-up. You need to look at it through a wide shot, which is impossible if you are in the epicentre of the events. 

During all these years, I was constantly trying to find answers to the question “Does art have power in times of war?”. It was our slogan for The Earth Is Blue As An Orange. My characters were shooting amateur films about their lives during the war, but for them, it was a way to deal with their trauma. Having had to repeat some traumatising experiences from the past, they had a chance to look at those experiences through different optics. While I was simply an observer, I believed that mattered the most. Everything changed when I stepped into my character’s shoes. I became that mother watching her child physically shaking because of fear. It was the second day of the full-scale Russian invasion. That night was very scary. We were listening to the sounds of explosions just behind our windows.

I am also afraid that some cinematographic tools may lead to crossing the very thin moral line and making art on blood. I have received many requests from foreign production companies who have offered me some ideas and scripts about this war and events that are currently happening or have happened very recently, including Bucha and Azovstal. In my opinion, going down this road is way too early and too dangerous. It is like a minefield. It is so easy to make a mistake. People are still being tortured, raped, and held captive. It is not the right time for shooting fiction films at the same locations where atrocities had happened.
I often ask myself: as an artist, should I just grab my camera and document the reality? It is also extremely important. Sometimes filmmakers become participants and witnesses of unique moments, and they should react.

Agnieszka Holland: I do not think there are rules. It is very subjective. 

I think documentary cinema is necessary. It documents atrocities, among other things, and can be used to bring perpetrators to justice. You are correct about fiction though, as it does require distance: of time, of place, or of being capable to tell the story.

When I analysed literature written during WWII in the concentration camps and ghettos, those in occupied Poland in particular, I found that the fiction novel as a genre was absent among those pieces of writing. By the end of the war, some powerful short stories started to appear, poetry and diaries. These genres were best suited to capture and pass the experience on. Fiction is heavy. It is always some kind of manipulation. And you feel like you do not have the moral right to manipulate the suffering. These stories have to be very naked and raw, very direct. 

I, however, am afraid that no one will be interested in watching things like that. During these last eight years, since the Revolution of Dignity, Ukrainian cinema has become one of the most powerful in Europe. And probably the only one speaking about very important things. But based on my own experience, it is difficult to find interest in something political, something unpleasant. Cinema has become very escapist. Securing funding to make a movie about love or family relations is quite easy. At the same time, people are too scared to make movies based on real experiences of the war.

Iryna Tsilyk: I, on the other hand, am afraid of becoming hostage to this topic. I feel like my colleagues and I need to make films about the war. Since 2014, the world first expected war movies from us, then it got tired of it, then everyone was expecting films about the war but without the war. The Earth Is Blue As An Orange is not about the war itself, it is about people and universal things like love, art, friendship, and family. I wanted to change my focus and shoot something else. And once again, I found myself unable to because the reality around me is so much stronger than anything else. 

Recently, I have started to come back to myself. At the moment, I am working on a new project. I want to make an animated documentary, which is a completely new genre for me. In my opinion, this is one of the strongest and most sincere ways to talk about personal stuff. Especially things that have already happened to me, my family, or the people I know. I do not want to shoot any reconstructions. 

As a woman, I want to talk about the feeling of insecurity, which I currently share with all the women I know. We are facing so many fears. I also feel like there are many crossroads and connections between our experience and the experience of women from the past, my grandmothers and their mothers.
History goes round in circles, again and again. All the trauma from the past, the trauma of the previous generations is still here. We still need to face it.  

Is poetry possible after Auschwitzs Theodor Adorno asked. Of course, it is, but it is a different kind of poetry. All the films we will shoot and all the poems and books we will write after this war will be different. This is a unique situation because so many artists are involved in this war. Together with journalists, writers, and intellectuals, they are defending Ukraine with weapons in their arms. It is devastating that many of them die. But I hope that many will survive, and we will have a huge wave of new Ukrainian art after this war.