In the Ukrainian film “Demons”, the reality of war surpasses fiction. Seven years of filming

It is very hot on Thursday 13 August in Locarno, but that is no obstacle for festival-goers who have travelled to Switzerland from all over the world for the film festival. The cinema is sold out for the world premiere of the Ukrainian film "Demons", screened in the "Cineasti del presente" section. As the audience takes the last remaining seats, a slender female figure in a black suit and low-heeled coral-coloured pumps slips into the auditorium. She stands, impatiently, in front of the stage, scanning the first members of the audience for her film. Natalka Vorozhbyt, a Ukrainian director, has undertaken a twenty-five-hour journey from Ukraine – where planes have not flown for four years – to present her film in Locarno. The last Ukrainian fiction film shot before the Russian invasion, her feature film explores the roots of the relationship between Ukraine and Russia through the lives of a couple.

Right from the opening scenes, the film transports us to the heart of Ukraine, to the valleys of the Poltava region, the birthplace of the Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol and his famous mythology. The choice of setting is no coincidence: “My roots are there. It was here, in the area around Myrhorod, that I first read Gogol’s stories, at the age of seven,” explains Natalka Vorozhbyt, whom we met in Kyiv, her hometown, before she left for Locarno. It was here, in central Ukraine, that Vorozhbyt unearthed the true story – that of her aunt – which inspired the film. Nina, strong and independent, the embodiment of post-Soviet Ukraine, takes in Slavik, a Russian writer adrift who ends up in her village in 1993, at the dawn of Ukrainian independence. “At the time, amidst the chaos of the economic crisis and under the influence of ‘great Russian culture’, Ukraine had not yet fully realised its independence. Through Nina, I wanted to show just how strong Ukrainian women are and how capable they are of defending themselves when attacked,” Natalka explains to the Swiss audience.

A woman as strong as her heroine, Vorozhbyt boasts a career spanning some thirty years in theatre. “I am first and foremost a playwright: theatre allows me to portray the world in the broadest possible way,” she confides. Her plays have been acclaimed in around ten countries. In Ukraine, she rose to fame thanks to the hit TV series "Catch the Kaidash", inspired by a great classic of Ukrainian literature. "Demons" also began life as a play. Written in 2005 as a reflection on “interdependence in Russian-Ukrainian relations”, and forgotten for years even by the author herself, the play regained its relevance following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014. “I was so fed up with other directors distorting my scripts that I decided to bring the screenplay to the screen myself, without any intermediaries,” jokes Natalka on stage at Locarno.

It was in 2020 that Vorozhbyt set to work. For the role of Nina, she chose a Ukrainian star, Ruslana Pysanka, known for her roles in theatre, film and television, where she has appeared on several occasions alongside Volodymyr Zelensky, the future President of Ukraine. For the role of the Russian writer, after a long and fruitless search in Ukraine, the director chose the Russian actor Aleksei Mitin. Filming began in late August 2021. By January 2022, 90 per cent of the film had already been shot. A month later, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, "Demons" was one of the last pre-war Ukrainian film productions, and it was not yet finished. To make matters worse, the Russian actor vanished off the radar and stopped responding. As for Ruslana Pysanka, she died of a rapidly progressing form of cancer six months later. “It was a disaster. I found myself without my two lead actors, in the midst of a war,” sums up Natalka Vorozhbyt. To make matters worse, the area around Myrhorod is now one of the places most heavily bombed by Russia in the Poltava region.

Yet Ukrainian women, as well as being strong, know how to see stories through to the end. The idea of resuming filming resurfaced in the spring of 2022, and the remaining ten per cent of the film was shot using stand-ins. “This story, which started out as a light-hearted satire, turned into a real tragedy in 2022,” Natalka reflects today. In this fifth year of the war, Natalka Vorozhbyt struggles to imagine her next project, especially after seven long years of work on Demons. At her dacha not far from Kyiv, she is preparing for a winter that is likely to be without electricity or heating in Ukraine. “During the day I make cherry and apricot jam. At night I count the explosions I hear,” the director says on social media. “Lately, I’ve found it impossible to put everything that’s happening into words,” admits Vorozhbyt. The film’s closing credits reveal that three members of the crew died in the war whilst defending Ukraine’s independence. Several other members of the team are fighting in the Ukrainian army. The director confesses that she finds it hard to put up with small talk whilst abroad, but the message she wants to convey to her international colleagues is clear. “Enjoy life, but don’t forget that it is fragile, that one day the explosions might echo outside your own front door if you let us lose this war,” concludes the director, before setting off on the thirty-two-hour journey back to Kyiv.