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| Oleksandr Rudynskyy in Rock, Paper, Scissors |
With a lot going on on the international stage, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has dropped down the news agenda recently, which has been really difficult for Ukrainian people whether they’re actively engaged in it, trying to get by there as civilians, or living in exile. Producer Hayder Rothschild Hoozeer and director Franz Böhm are trying to make a difference to that with their short film Rock, Paper, Scissors, which tells the true story of a teenager caught up in the conflict who goes to desperate lengths to try to protect his father and fellow civilians. The film has recently been nominated for a BAFTA, significantly boosting the amount of attention it gets.
“It feels incredible,” says Hayder. “It's very humbling to be recognised by BAFTA in this way. Our intention with the film when we made it was to tell this story as authentically as possible, this true story about Ivan and the current conflict that's happening, and to tell it from a grounded perspective, a civilian perspective. So for it to have an impact, as it has so far, has been incredible for us.”
I ask why he and Franz think it has taken off in this way.
“Well, the film is set in Putin's war in Ukraine,” says Franz. “It's a highly personal story. It's a short story, but I still believe it speaks to a universal audience. The story is highly relevant, it's quite timely and I do believe that many people were able to connect with the story even though they're not Ukrainian themselves or don't live in a war torn country themselves. That's actually what was so inspiring for both Hayder and myself. Ivan's story is not a typical war story, in my opinion. It's very much about the effect that this war has on everyday people, and that's what we wanted to focus on.
“Ivan, after volunteering for the Ukrainian armed services, was sent to the UK for his military training. He was training in the UK for nearly six months. I met Ivan during his training. He was 17 years old at the time. A very, very funny, amazing young human being. We ended up chatting about the wound that he had in his leg, the massive scar, and he told me this absolutely astonishing story. I think Hayder and I, and to be honest, the entire team, we just sort of connected to it and thought it was incredibly powerful.
“We are certainly very grateful for Ivan's contribution to that project because he was deeply involved in the screenwriting process and the whole production, really. He was involved in location scouting, he was involved in the post production.”
Although one wouldn’t know it from the images onscreen, they shot it on the outskirts of Watford.
“It's a former brewery, actually,” says Hayder. “In fact, I think it still is operating as a brewery. I have to give a big thank you and a big shout out to our production team. They worked really hard on trying to find a suitable location that would fit the look and the feel of what we were trying to achieve. And also a big shout out to our production design team as well. They completely transformed that space.
“It was a former bunker that had then been taken over as a brewery. When we were searching for former bunkers outside of London, in Europe, this was one of the ones that popped up. Over a period of quite a few months, we built up a relationship with the location owners, who were very supportive of the project, very supportive of the story. We managed to make it work with our limited resources.”
I suggest that using a real bunker serves as a reminder that war doesn’t just affect people far away – that not s long ago it affected the UK too – and he agrees. I ask how they transformed it to create the field hospital where the first half of the film is set
“We have to give full kudos to our production designer, Shivani [Bhawnani], and to our arts department, which was led by Shivani,” says Franz. “She was really on the forefront of doing all of that. I remember when DOP Hsien Yu Niu and myself, when we first walked into that active brewery, we thought, okay, it's quite amazing. The distances are quite cool, and this would work quite well logistically, but it looked nothing like a field hospital, nothing like a bunker. But then Shivani did her magic there. And, yes, Ivan was involved, but I also have to say that Shivani herself just had such a high standard for authenticity.”
There’s warm lighting inside the bunker which immediately makes it feel more inviting than the stark outdoors.
“Yeah, 100%. We wanted to have at least a small feeling of cosiness and of home and of relative safety. And I think also it's really amazing to see when audiences realise that this story is actually happening in wartime Ukraine because it's not immediately clear from the beginning. If you don't understand the language, you might think it's elsewhere, and this field hospital should look somewhat universal.”
That was also the case with the costumes, he says.
“I think with the costumes, we again have to give high compliments to our team. The Ukrainian uniforms then were actually real Ukrainian uniforms. The Russian uniforms were extremely well made duplicates. Again, there was an enormous level of authenticity that we wanted to achieve there. Also, I think something that is often underestimated is that everyday people in these situations, for example, in that field hospital, they still have stuff to do. The children, they need something to do, and people need to eat and stuff. So that was really important for us, to make it a lively place.”
“Whilst it's very authentically Ukrainian, we wanted this to be able to sit within any kind of conflict,” adds Hayder. “The idea is that this is what it looks like for a civilian or for someone on the ground. We didn't want to make the character into this Hollywood hero that saves the day. It's not good versus evil or anything like that. We really wanted to show how this feels when it's happening around you. We tried to make sure that that was felt through the story.”
Was it a consideration with casting as well, trying to find actors who looked and felt like ordinary people?
“Absolutely,” says Franz. “The casting started around the role of Ivan and it was a big question, who should play him. And with Oleksandr Rudynskyy, we had such a brilliant, experienced, amazing actor and were extremely, extremely grateful when he said yes. And when he joined the cast, the remaining cast was made up of Ukrainians coming from Ukraine directly or who were based in the UK or in Germany or other parts of Europe.
“I’m grateful in every way for the support of the Ukrainian community along the way. I think they've been incredibly kind and generous and just generally quite helpful. Very supportive. And yeah, what you're saying is absolutely right, they should look like everyday people. Also, Ivan himself, he was not like a superhero, he was just an everyday person who was put in this enormous and very brutal situation.”
“We had quite an emotional response from the Ukrainian community,” says Hayder. “I think with it being an active conflict currently, it rings quite close to home for a lot of different people. Some of the feedback that we've had was that it felt very real for them to see the bunker, and the sound design of the outside world. There's this constant looming of the sounds of planes. You don't know if they're Ukrainian planes or Russian planes. You don't know if they're near or if they're far. They responded quite emotionally to it.
“Generally speaking, we've had quite a lot of good, positive support, because I think there's a lot of fatigue in the news of this conflict. I think people can quite desensitised to it. A lot of the news is reported in numbers, like 10,000 misplaced or 2,000 here or 5,000 here. And I think quite a lot of people tend to emotionally move on, or they don't quite understand what that information means. I think with the film, it's helpful in bringing that conversation back to the forefront, bringing the conflict back to people's minds and people's conversations.”
“I think the film project itself and Ivan's story needs to be at the absolute centre of our efforts here,” says Franz. “We thought that this story was extremely, extremely relevant and needs to be told. Bringing Putin's war back into the conversation that we have as a society is certainly a goal of ours. And then I think there are small elements of the story that different members of the team can relate to. I can very much relate to Ivan as part of his journey.” They have both experienced a similar type of bereavement, he explains, and it gave them something to bond over.
“I second what Franz has been saying,” says Hayder “I have a personal connection to Ukraine. One of my best friends is Ukrainian and she was displaced in 2014 from Donetsk when they seized that city. And then again with this more recent invasion, I spent quite a lot of time in Ukraine as well, so it hit hard for me in that aspect. But to follow on what Franz has said as well, I think that at the core, it's a story of the quiet bravery that people face in adversity. And I think that even from my own life story, my own background, you know, it's just something that I really want to support and push with these types of storytelling. It's something I'm very passionate about.”
Before we go, I take the opportunity to ask Franz about his first feature-length film, Dear Future Children, which he completed not long ago.
“It was a really incredible journey,” he says. “It featured the stories of three young activists, three young people who really are similar to Ivan, very, very brave in what they are doing. We are now in preparation for our next true story-based film that will shoot later this year, and I'm definitely very excited for that.”
