In this article for the Polish online magazine Dwutygodnik, film critic Natalia Serebriakova interviewed Yuri Rechinsky, Ukrainian director, editor, and screenwriter. In the following conversation they discuss Yuri's upcoming film Dear Beautiful Beloved, as well as his other works, Ugly and Sickfuckpeople. Yuri shares his experiences as a filmmaker, whose works grapple with challenging societal issues, and explains his motivation to return back to Ukraine to take part in the life of the country during wartime.
NATALIA SEREBRIAKOVA: Why did you decide to combine these two stories — the evacuation of elderly people from border zones and the transportation of soldiers’ bodies?
YURI RECHINSKY: It’s about the evacuation of the living and the dead — a rather transparent idea. If you think about the film’s title, it fits all these characters, including the children being taken out of the war zone. Why did I leave Austria and come to Ukraine to film all of them? I realized I couldn’t keep watching the war through the news. Because very quickly, images, texts, and headlines start repeating in your head. And you lose your sensitivity. You wake up, read the news — 27 people killed. And you think, “That’s not so bad, yesterday it was 50.” That’s what happens to everyone who observes the war through the news.
It was important for me to understand what’s behind these numbers — what one death means, what one life being saved means. It turned out to be a very complex and drawn-out process. For the elderly people you see in the film, it’s dangerous, because not all of them will survive it. Just due to their health, stress. Not to mention that during evacuation they can come under fire, bombings. And the same goes for evacuating the fallen — that too is dangerous work. Our characters do it heroically. For the search teams, it’s dangerous because everything is mined. There are tripwires, cluster bombs, landmines everywhere.
And those who, for example, transport the bodies of the dead — that’s dangerous too. These are soldiers, and they drive to Kostiantynivka every day, and the Russians deliberately hunt them. So our soldiers constantly change the locations from which they pick up the bodies. They don’t do it from just one morgue — they have to hide, because they’re constantly being targeted. Some volunteers, like Bulldozer (a character in the film, a driver who delivers the bodies to their families — Ed.) and his team, have lost several people simply from exhaustion. Ukraine is a large country — the journey can take up to five days. Some drivers just fell asleep behind the wheel at some point and crashed.
Sasha Bulldozer has been deeply involved in this for a long time. For him, it started back in 2014. If I’m not mistaken, it was Ilovaisk. Back then, many bodies of Ukrainians were left on occupied territory, and the Russians wouldn’t let the military retrieve them. But they did allow volunteers and civilians to do it. These weren’t just random civilians — they were specifically chosen by the army. And it’s a difficult task to find someone willing to go into occupied territory to transport bodies. For many, this work is unthinkable. Sasha brought back one body, then another. Then people started asking him directly to retrieve their relatives’ bodies. At some point, Sasha started working with an entire group from the army. And then in 2022, a whole new wave began. Now, together with Sasha, there are 12 drivers — it’s a volunteer network. This work is hard, exhausting, and risky.
As far as I know, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion you volunteered in Vienna?
I was looking for where I could be useful. In the first week, I was already somewhere at a border, picking someone up. I wanted to see what it looked like. It had a very different effect than just watching the news. Because when you’re at an overcrowded train station, inside the crowd, you can feel and see the state of the people arriving — you notice details that tell you something about their journey. About how hungry the children might be. About how terrified the mothers might be, who, from sheer stress, just drop their children onto the ground or tip over strollers for no reason at all. That was my first encounter with the real face of the war through a particular group of people. These moments make up the film.
The story of evacuating elderly people somewhat echoes your previous film Ugly. Those medical facilities they end up in are rather claustrophobic, with peeling walls. Does the condition of Ukrainian medical institutions particularly concern you?
Not really, I just really like our hospitals. And actually, the shelter they get to in Dnipro is a good place — very good people work there. They may be exhausted, overworked, but they’re doing something good. Sure, maybe it doesn’t have a fancy “European renovation,” but honestly… It’s not about what condition the walls are in, I think.
How did the elderly people react to being filmed?
We got to know most of these people back at their homes, when they were being evacuated. We traveled with volunteers, looked for apartments, I’d go in with them and say: “We’re a film crew, may we come in?” Then, in a calmer setting — already on the bus — a more personal connection would form. Basically, if you help carry a grandma down the stairs and later bring her a bowl of borscht, that’s how you build trust.
Back at train stations, at checkpoints on the border with Ukraine, even in March 2022, I met many people who wanted the world to see what was happening to them. They saw it as injustice, violence, an insult. It was important to them that their pain didn’t go unheard or unseen. So there were people who reacted to the camera even more strongly than I needed as a director. Some wanted to tell their whole story right away. They’d get off the train, see the camera, see me — a couple of words — and then they’d start talking for half an hour. Very emotionally.
What is the organization that was evacuating people? We see foreign volunteers on screen.
There were a lot of different organizations. There were British volunteers — they were pretty autonomous but worked together with a large organization called East SOS. They also had crews evacuating people from Donetsk region and all over Ukraine, wherever it was needed, because they’ve been around for quite a while. Then there’s Ukrzaliznytsia — the national railway — which runs evacuation trains from Pokrovsk in Donetsk region to Dnipro. They have their own staff: conductors, evacuation teams, medics. And at the train station in Dnipro there were many people from the organization Save Ukraine. It’s also a major group that provides shelters and evacuations along the whole front line.
In the film, Ukrzaliznytsia plays an important role — it’s an public service all Ukrainians admire these days. What were the workers like?
We had to work very closely with Ukrzaliznytsia — their workers are involved in so many parts of the process, and we filmed some of that work. They operate in dangerous areas, evacuating people from Donetsk region. They also keep changing evacuation points because, sooner or later, those places always get hit. Maybe I expected that only some special people — the military or emergency services — would go there. But it’s just regular conductors who worked on the railway long before the war.
When did you film?
We shot from summer 2022 until February 2023.
In that time you must have shot countless hours of material.
A lot. We had filming days that lasted almost a full 24 hours. For example, if it’s the start of the story about the elderly people — the ones who are still alive — a filming day could be 18 to 20 hours. Just because it would start in Dnipro, then we’d drive to Pokrovsk, meet the evacuation crews there, go from Pokrovsk to somewhere like Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Bakhmut — pick people up there, usually at different locations — bring them back to Pokrovsk, get them on a train, travel with them by train to Dnipro, and then in Dnipro go from the station to this shelter called Ocean of Kindness. All of that happens in one day. It’s a huge journey and you can’t shoot it over different days — it happens to the people within a single day. So we tried to stay with them at every stage.
You were picking people up from dangerous places like Bakhmut, Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka. Were you scared?
Yes, I was scared. But fear wasn’t really the dominant feeling or the hardest part. We went there knowingly — there was a sense that we were in the right place, doing what we chose to do.
You were doing all this under bombing and shelling?
Near shelling — yes. When I was going with the volunteers while preparing for filming, I realized I couldn’t bring a full crew into Bakhmut — it would have been an unjustifiable risk. It was very hard to focus on practical tasks there. It was so intense and dangerous that I started thinking about big questions about my life — how satisfied I was with it, whether I’d done everything I wanted to do, whether I was ready to die.
In Bakhmut there were these five-story apartment blocks. And there was always some elderly person on the top floor who couldn’t get down on their own. For the neighbors it was really hard evacuating someone from the top floor, too. If there was an elderly person on the first or second floor, they’d get taken out. But the fifth floor was usually left. So there we were — we’d arrive at one of these five-story buildings, there’s no one left, nothing left, just constant strikes... You’d hear explosions happening in a radius all around you, getting closer and closer. There were three of us — me and two British volunteers, Johnny and Elizabeth — and we had to quickly and carefully carry a grandma down the stairs, then try to get out, which wasn’t easy either because no navigation works there anymore. You either go by experience or instinct. It was scary, but you find a balance between the risks that make sense to take and the ones that don’t. But we had experienced people on the team who’d been working in the war zone for a long time.
Were they Ukrainian?
Yes.
So your crew wasn’t just Austrians?
I didn’t have a single Austrian on my team. Even before I came to Ukraine, when I was putting the team together, I realized there was no point in asking Austrians to risk their lives for a film. For them, it would just be a film. But for us, it’s not just a film — it’s an attempt to take part in the life of the country. To document this war. To change people’s thinking. To give them an experience they can’t get from the news.
How can one mentally endure filming something like the washing of a fallen soldier’s body? Or collecting their remains on the battlefield?
We were always alongside people who endure far harsher things, for much longer and more intensely than we do. And despite that, they keep functioning, doing their job, and haven’t turned into cold, detached, unpleasant people. On the contrary. There were examples of people nearby doing a bigger, more difficult task, yet still remaining human — able to sympathize with you, worry about you, your condition, your safety.
Moreover, to get into the morgue and film bodies being washed and dressed (not to mention the sewing up and identification that happens beforehand), you have to see and do a lot beforehand. It’s important to prepare yourself in a basic way for these difficult scenes. This was a long journey — three months telling the story of the fallen. During the research phase, I realized it’s impossible to just observe and do nothing... I can’t just stand there and watch. It doesn’t work like that. So it quickly became clear that to film this story, I had to be not just an observer but a participant.
How exactly did you work?
We loaded and unloaded bodies, transported them, and handed them over. If it was a search-and-recovery group, I went out with them; I worked a bit as a driver — transporting canine handlers and sappers.
Do you still experience PTSD from this?
Yes, I do. It’s even hard for me to watch my own film. I watched it all the way through at its premiere in Locarno, in front of a large audience, and I thought: that’s it, I won’t watch it again.
How did you edit it? Was it a long process?
I edited for a year, and that was harder than filming. Because during filming, you’re often in some adrenaline-fueled situation, and you’re not alone — you’re with a group of colleagues. In a group, everyone looks out for each other, supports each other. It’s much easier to get through shocking experiences together. We talked a lot after each episode. We had debriefings, shared what we saw and felt. That really helped us get through the filming. Also, if you finish a hard day somewhere warm, and you’re all intact, with your arms and legs, alive, heart beating, able to breathe — that’s already a blessing.
We had many scenes of meetings with relatives — lots of different versions. We filmed those for a long time. How do you choose one and leave the others out?
How did you know when it was time to finish — when the story felt complete?
I’d work for four days, then on the fifth day show the material to a test group of three or four people, and we’d watch it together. That energy helps you feel everything through the person watching it for the first time, and you start to feel things more sharply, too. We had many such screenings. There were more shocking shots in different edits. I risked overwhelming the audience so much that they’d stop feeling anything. So it was important for us to find a balance.
Which scenes didn’t make it into the final cut?
There was a shot in the morgue… After it, nothing else works. After it, you can’t watch the work with the bodies — washing them, dressing them, applying makeup. You can’t look at it and see respect or tenderness, because before that, you saw something so harsh that it cut off your ability to feel anything good for a while.
In your film Ugly, you thank Monica Willi, the editor for Michael Glawogger, the renowned Austrian documentarian. Did you involve her at all during the editing of your new film?
No, we never worked directly together. But we worked with Andrea Wagner, who edited some of my favorite Glawogger films. I learned a lot from her, and we’ve already agreed to do my next film together. We’ll continue working together.
Let’s talk a bit more about Glawogger. Why is he your favorite director?
I watched his first film on the Kyiv–Odesa train before my first shooting day for Sickfuckpeople. I was traveling with the cinematographer, and he said, “Look at this film,” and we started watching… How is it possible to make films like this? How is it possible to edit documentaries like this? It’s very different from all the documentaries I had seen before.
There are people for whom Glawogger’s films are too beautiful, artificial, edited, staged. But for me, it works differently. I was very grateful to see that it’s possible to work with reality like that. For example, his film Megacities — when I watched it, I had no idea that such people and situations, like those in his film, could even coexist with me and the reality I know. Much of that film was a very emotional, sometimes traumatic experience for me. Using artificial means, carefully calculated shots, and editing, he gave me a powerful experience of something real in a very distant life I had never encountered before, and at the same time said something about my own life.
Did you know him personally?
We had a mutual acquaintance, an Austrian producer I worked with. He showed him the rough cut of Sickfuckpeople. And that’s how we kind of became friends, because he was probably the first person to tell me it’s not complete crap and that the film actually deserves to be seen.
What was that film about?
We shot Sickfuckpeople over three years. Part of that time, a small group of us lived in Odesa basements with homeless children. On the first shooting day, when we went in to meet them, the kids pulled out syringes and started shooting themselves with some nasty stuff. It wasn’t even a drug — it was some kind of toxin that gives a short high but has very serious side effects. Even after the first use, it can cause motor impairments. It was very shocking to be so close to kids and syringes. A shocking experience.
When I got out of that basement, I realized I wanted to scream, get drunk, and do something — change something. I decided just to take the camera and go there with the operator every day. We became friends with some of the kids. We would come for two to four weeks, then return and edit. At that time, I worked in advertising to earn money and continue filming. That’s how three years passed.
When we first met, some were fourteen, some thirteen. The oldest was eighteen. And over three years of filming, they grew and changed a lot. Some confidently went into crime. Some tried to find their parents. Some decided to get out of the basement and start a completely different life — to start a family, have children. There were many hopes. But it seems to me almost all of them ended very tragically.
Sickfuckpeople is not just about these kids, but also society, right?
That’s a direct quote from one of the characters. But here’s the thing — the kids live in the basement of an ordinary nine-story building. They have neighbors. Some of these neighbors, especially those living on the lower floors, know about them. But these are completely different worlds, located just two meters apart. Interaction between these worlds is usually negative. Either total ignoring or active attempts to get rid of these kids, calls to the police. People even welded the basement doors shut. So Sickfuckpeople is about those people we walk to the store with. Recently, I remembered that some of these kids were from Transnistria. Only now did I realize that they are partly children of war. And that realization somehow caught up with me.
Interview by Natalia Serebriakova; Translated by Kate Tsurkan; Portrait of Yuri Rechinsky by Christoph Liebentritt; Stills from the film provided by the director.
The article was first published in Ukrainian and Polish and came out of the collaboration between the IWM and the Polish online magazine Dwutygodnik.
Natalia Serebriakova is a film critic for Korydor, Delfi.lv, and Cineuropa.org. Member of the Ukrainian Film Critics Association. Programmer at the Scanorama International Film Festival (Vilnius) and of the Ukrainian Days at the Cinémathèque (Paris).
Yuri Rechinsky is a director, editor, and screenwriter. His first film, Sickfuckpeople, a documentary drama about homeless drug addicts, won awards at festivals in Canada, France, England, Poland, and Austria. The film Ugly was co-produced by Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion. In 2022, his feature-length documentary Signs of War was screened at various film festivals, such as DOK Leipzig, Hot Docs, and others. His film Dear Beautiful Beloved will be shown at the Camerimage Film Festival in Toruń on November 16–23.
