The financiers and producers of Belgian director Pieter-Jan De Pue’s Mariinka, the opening film of this month’s CPH: DOX, have learned to be patient.
It is seven years since the project, then known as Four Brothers, won the Eurimages coproduction award for best pitch at CPH:Forum in 2019, followed later that year by the work-in-progress award at the Flanders Image industry showcase in Ghent.
The film was due to be delivered in 2022.
But when Russia invaded Ukraine in February of that year, De Pue broadened the film’s scope to take in this altered reality. It is still the story of four Ukrainian siblings who grew up in an orphanage - and whose lives were ruptured by war.
Ruslan joined the Russian army while his brother Mark fights for Ukraine. Another brother, Maksim, a once promising footballer, ended up wheelchair bound after a motorbike accident. The youngest sibling, Danil, was adopted by a US family in Mississippi and rechristened as Samuel.
But the film now includes the stories of Natasha, a former boxing champion turned frontline military paramedic, and Angela, who smuggles goods across the frontline to survive, and its title has changed accordingly.
The film’s producers – Belgium’s Savage Film, the Netherlands’ Submarine and Paris-based sales agent Films Boutique - were familiar with De Pue’s process, having worked with him on his Sundance-award-winning documentary, Land Of The Enlightened, set in Afghanistan in 2016.
“They knew it was going to be another story in a conflict zone and that we were going to work for a long period with a small crew in a flexible way,” says De Pue. “What we did not know was that [Russia’s] full-scale invasion was going to happen.”
De Pue shelved his original plans to include hybrid elements of the story in which child actors would reenact the brothers’ childhoods.
“We needed to adapt. The story was not yet there. We realised that the story would become very weak if we were going to show only the story about the four brothers at war when the reality has changed so much.”
He says this required extensive renegotiations with the documentary’s backers, including the coproducers, various film funds and broadcasters.
“ARTE-ZDF was involved as one of the main partners, and they were pushing us to have the film delivered as soon as possible,” De Pue explains. “But we also made it clear to our partners that the aspect of time, filming over such a long period when you see the characters evolving physically but also the different choices they have to make during times of war, was going to be a very interesting aspect.”
It helped De Pue and his team had already shot so much striking material to show the backers.
Divided opinion
Mariinka is being released by Dalton Distribution in Belgium and by Periscoop in the Netherlands. However, De Pue acknowledges his documentary is likely to prove contentious in Ukraine itself.
As the end credits reveal, Ruslan went missing on the battlefield while fighting for Russia, and his fate remains unknown. “He was on the wrong side, and he chose the wrong politics and the wrong ideology, but, in fact, as a person, he was a very nice guy, always smiling and always very enthusiastic to work with us,” says De Pue.
“It has been a long, long discussion not only with my producers but also with my crew,” he explains. “We did many tests within Ukraine, private screenings that we organised, and it’s obvious it will create very controversial reactions. Already, a lot of people refused to have their names on the credits. That’s why in the credits we put only the first name and the family name with the first letter. Basically, we know that in times of war, it is not allowed to give Russia a voice.”
“Some people appreciate that we dare to talk about these kinds of taboos about divided families. Lots of people in the Donbas were pro-Russian [before the invasion], and this is not just coming out of the blue.”
At test screenings, some viewers have stated that in “times of war, it is not the right time to release films like this,” he says
Others have said, “Maybe it’s brave that some people from the West are talking this way about our reality”.
Mariinka opens CPH:DOX on March 11.
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