A version of this interview with “Klondike” director Maryna Er Gorbach originally appeared in the International Film edition of awards magazine TheWrap.
Maryna Er Gorbach was living in Istanbul in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and a Malaysian Airlines passenger flight was shot down by pro-Russian separatists over Ukraine. She turned those events into the backdrop of a drama about a pregnant woman in a brutal environment, a drama with premonitions of the current state of Ukraine.
The film is Ukraine’s entry in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category.
Why go back to the events of 2014 for this movie?
I started writing in 2016. I think it took me a year to have a written draft, but I had been thinking since 2014. It made me wonder if this catastrophe of the international plane crash is not told, and criminals are not punished, then what? what about the occupation? What about the annexation of Crimea? And basically, where is the voice of the locals? I was thinking about the local people living under the occupation, who will care about them?
Where were you living when the annexation took place and the plane was shot down?
I was in Odessa with my family and baby. It wasn’t very close, but it was a very similar claustrophobic feeling to what we’re going through right now. And the media are working on our fears. Sometimes I tell my husband: “I want to take a flower and bring it closer”. And that was what happened with “Klondike”. He was trying to bring me closer to nature and talk about a simple local family and their very simple problems: everyday life during the war. And I wanted to ask questions to an international audience: What do you think is happening there? Is it a local conflict? Is it occupation? Is it war?
For the first time, I decided not to complicate things. I just gave up my fears and said that I don’t want to show this feeling that Russia is a huge country with thousands of rockets and that one day all of them will destroy Ukraine. That was killing my soul. So the key for me was to fight against this idea that we are a small country, we have a huge neighbor and they will kill us. I decided that I know people in Ukraine, I know that they are strong, and I want to tell them about a normal family.
Were you thinking of this as a film for the Ukraine or as a way to tell the story to an international audience?
As a Ukrainian, as a woman, I want to shout this out to the world. But as a director, I know that I can’t yell at an international audience. I have to find a way to ask them questions. And I only have one ability. This is art.
There are some extraordinary long shots in the film, including one near the end of the film when the woman (Oxana Cherkashyna) is giving birth as pro-Russian separatists run in and out of the room, ignoring her and taking whatever they want. want. Was it a difficult scene to film emotionally or physically?
Well, that’s a very good question. I started writing “Klondike” from that final scene. It was the first scene, and I knew it had to come to it, because that was my feeling about Ukraine in 2014, 2016 and 2017. It’s the war against nature. So let’s try to get to this message that human instincts and the power of nature, which is represented by the female body, are stronger than war.
That scene was one of the last days of shooting. Technically it was very easy because we knew how to do it. And emotionally there were no problems, but it was a very trusting scene with the actress. She has to disappear, trust her body and her emotional instincts. I watched on my monitor, and then I removed it and went to look at it one more time. And the next day I went up to her and hugged her and thanked her for her trust.
What were the biggest challenges in making the film?
You ask me now, at the end of 2022. If you ask me last year, maybe I would tell you that the coronavirus is the problem, you know? But I think the real challenge is staying independent. Whatever we do with this film, we have some principles. We are fighting for them. We made this film to ask the international audience very carefully: ‘What do you think about the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border?’ And then all of a sudden, after February 24 (when Russia invaded the Ukraine), we became a behind-the-scenes movie of all that news.
Watching the film now, given the situation in Ukraine eight years after these events, I was particularly struck by the moment one character says to another: “This war won’t end until all your enemies are dead.”
That sentence is true. Yes. I was trying to be very honest.
Read more of the International Film edition here.
