27/06/2024 - Antonin Peretjatko climbs deep inside of the map to speaks of his trip to Ukraine, providing modest and incredibly human insight into a war with extensive repercussions

"We crossed paths with a number of people who’d travelled to the brink to escape the epicentre of the war, and we came together like pebbles in an avalanche". Now all but relegated to the background of international media coverage almost 28 months on from Russia’s attempted coup, the war in Ukraine is wreaking no less havoc or sowing no less death on the front line, continuing to upend the lives of those living in the country and seriously undermining the global geopolitical balance.

Documented meticulously since it first began by way of countless films and written and audiovisual press reports, the Ukrainian war remains an inexhaustible mine of stories and testimonies, but it’s still surprising to learn that French filmmaker Antonin Peretjatko, who’s renowned for his remarkably off-beat comedies (The Rendez-Vous of Déjà Vu [+see also:
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interview: Antonin Peretjatko
film profile], which was unveiled in a world premiere within the French competition of the 35th FIDMarseille and which is now enjoying its international premiere in a special screening in the 58th Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

"What about my grandpa in all of that? He left Ukraine 100 years ago". Mainly spurred on by this very specific family tie, in the month of May 2022, Antonin Peretjatko decided to set off on a journey from Paris ("as we leave, we see a camp of refugees who have fled another war") to accompany teacher Andrei - who had been a Ukrainian refugee in France for several months by this point - back to Lviv to collect some of his belongings. And it’s his own viewpoint as an artist that the director (who shot the film, recorded the sound and edited it on his own, as well as providing the voice-over) shares with us over the course of this journey (which is twofold, since a second trip sees him travelling to Bucha nine months later). His is an entirely different viewpoint to that of a journalist: it’s freer, fragmented, subjective, sometimes ironic, but it never deviates from the bitter heart of its subject: war, both invisible and omnipresent, impacting lives and leaving scars in its wake. "I take a 16mm camera, with which I hope to be able to evade formalism and the particular way of thinking that digital imposes on us": thus, our funny war reporter leaps into action.

Opening with a prologue which takes a highly humorous approach to retracing a trip to Russia on the Trans-Siberian ten years earlier, Voyage Along the War notably introduces us to Ihor, who fled Kharkiv as the bombs fell; Alex, whom everyone thought had died in Mariupol Theatre; Ruslan, the director of Kiev’s puppetry school, as he speaks of the terror he experienced in the streets of his hometown, Bucha; Vitaliy, a visual artist from Lysychansk, in the Donbass region; Oleksandr, the director of the Kherson Theatre who was kidnapped by the Russians during the first few days of the invasion; and Ella, a poet and musician from Irpin who epitomises the extent of the trauma felt by all these displaced people: "all that remains now is a family photo with holes instead of faces". These many poignant and chilling accounts are interspersed with the personal observations and reflections of Antonin Peretjatko, as he makes connections using details which many would have considered insignificant, but which actually prove to be highly symbolic of a land haunted by a strange mix of joy (at being alive) and sadness, in a journey, an exile, towards a better life. Because "in this story of war, the desire to film the springtime often wins out, because plants find the strength to grow despite the horrors on the surface".

Voyage Along the War was produced by bathysphere who are also steering international sales.

(Translated from French)