Galway Film Fleadh to premiere Ukrainian war documentary

A documentary shot over several years on Ukrainian frontlines will premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh on Friday.

It is called Brace for Oblivion and follows seven citizen-soldiers through the horrors of war following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The stark narrative is often captured under fire from the ground level perspective of men and women enduring intense open-ended combat.

It is storytelling under extraordinary circumstances.

The New York director of the documentary said he wanted to document the experience of the fighters through the eyes of the Ukrainians themselves rather than making this a chronicle of the war.

Xackery Irving said: "The world's eyes were on Ukraine when they were invaded and mine were too.

"I'm not Ukrainian, but when I first entered Ukraine, I wasn't clear on what kind of story I would tell as a filmmaker.

"Initially, I was focused on reporters and volunteers, and then I met the men and women on the frontline who were one day soldiers, the day before they were citizens."

He said that he was "so inspired to be close to them and tell their story through their experience".

Mr Irving said "a lot time" when Ukraine is discussed "it is from the outside - the forces that are influencing the perspectives of what this fight is".

He said: "The best way to tell it is through the voices of the Ukrainians, who are fighting for their survival, and being as close to them with the camera as possible.

"Over the course of three-and-a-half years, trust was built, an understanding of this being a collective story.

"I was able to be there in these gritty situations with them as close as they would let me."

Mr Irving is at the Galway Film Fleadh with Bohdan Patel, who was a 19-year-old Ukrainian student when he joined the frontline.

He is now a junior lieutenant and heavily involved in the drone programme that has proven effective in the war with Russia.

"I knew nothing about army, I knew nothing about weapons, actually," Mr Patel said.

"We handled our weapons pretty badly at that time," he added.

Mr Patel said he was "just a simple infantry soldier" during the first years of the war.

This, he said, involved "fighting in trenches" and "digging trenches".

"Right now, and after that, I've become like kind of reconnaissance, using drones to secure our positions, just to have a view on what's happening on the battlefield," he said.

He added: "Then we started using bombs on the drones and after that, I've become an instructor, UAV instructor.

"I was teaching a lot of people how to use drones, simple drones.

"It's no fancy stuff."

Mr Patel said "it's become really huge", adding that there is "a lot of manufacturers, a lot of drones, planes".

He added: "I never had any technical studies. I'm actually like humanitarian, if you call it right, so I love history, English, politics, and stuff.

"But still I have managed to learn a lot about technologies, drones, and about a new shape of warfare, if you can call it like that."

Mr Patel was with other young men whose lives changed overnight, but he said he has no regrets.

He said: "No, no, not at all. I would go through this journey once again.

"I'm ready, and it was the right choice."

Mr Patel added: "Actually, I would say it wasn't even a choice, like you woke up, it's war outside, you have to go to the army, you have to defend your country, your land because I kind of understood who Russians really are.

"I understood if they will capture us, they will torture us, destroy our culture and it will be the horrible times for us.

"So it's better to, you know, die with the sword in your hand.

"We are just defending ourselves."

Mr Irving said the film is ultimately about humanity, and war is the last thing these Ukrainians want to be doing.

"The weight of their stories is something that I'm processing still, and it's very much a text of the film," he said.

Mr Irving said combat "is not something that they gravitate towards", adding "they are in situations where they have to defend their homeland".

He said: "So we're reminding people of what is at stake by showing scenes, for example, of a group of family members grieving the loss of those missing in action, an airstrike in the middle of the capital of the city being defended with patriot missiles, or you see a parade of gear that was used to invade and conquer Kyiv, and people looking at them.

"This is a reality of what we're facing."

He said the documentary is "about the immersion of this experience so the subjects can connect with an audience by them identifying with their experience".

This, he said, "was the challenge we had in the edit and in the field.

"It was all about just filming as much as possible, without crossing some lines, always sort of having the permission of when we were filming painful moments, but just as much as possible, filming the experience, getting to know the footage intimately, even though we had about a thousand hours of it," Mr Irving said.

This, he added, was "so that we could build that experience in the edit room".

"So that was the mindset while I was there," he said.

Mr Patel said the prospect of a ceasefire is complicated and the process is ongoing."I believe the Russians will use a ceasefire as a way to gather resources and attack again, they won't let us go easily," he said.

"It's not like you can get out of a tiger's mouth easily," he added.

Russia, he said, "still have goals they want to achieve".

He shook his head sadly and said: "The ceasefire is not ending of the war, unfortunately.

"It will stretch for years."

Brace for Oblivion will be screened at the Pálás Cinema in Galway City at 2.30pm on Friday and will be followed by a discussion.