power

in Ukraine. It really does affect every single one of us, at least in Europe,” Vyshnevska continues. “That’s when we started to think, what kinds of stories can we tell and what kinds of stories do we want to tell? Then on the other hand, what kinds of stories can we actually film right now and where do we get the money?”

Before the war, high-end Ukrainian drama productions would often rely on international partners for additional finance, and this continued to be the case after the invasion began. Vyshnevska pitched Those Who Stayed to executives at Red Arrow and the distributor became their first major collaborator.

“Those Who Stayed spoke to them,” she says. “It is about the war but it’s also about more than that. It’s too early to be talking about the war experience. We haven’t processed it yet. It’s not the time. One day it will come. But we also don’t want to be defined by the war. It happened to us, but it’s not all we are.

“We wanted to talk about the humanity of it and what happened to us as people when the war started – the reasons we found inside ourselves and our families and our communities to keep on going. It is ultimately about hope.”

Film UA had already envisioned the format for the series – six different stories told by different writers and directors, with each one inspired by real experiences. Then, when Red Arrow signed on, it fully financed all the scripts. Several Nordic broadcasters then joined as coproducers, namely SVT in Sweden, NRK in Norway and YLE in Finland, Denmark’s DR, Iceland’s RUV, France Télévisions and Lumiere in Benelux also picked up the series.

“There was a huge leap of faith from everyone,” says Vyshnevska. “There was a lot of passion, a lot of belief and then it just happened. The creative team had so little time that I don’t know how they did it. Everyone was giving 200%.”

On the ground, the production was overseen by Vyshnevska and Anna Eliseeva as producers alongside showrunner Anastasiia Lodkina. In making the series, Lodkina felt it was important to talk about not only

L-R: Those Who Stayed features six separate episodes, including Biliy (aka The Homeless), KyivBerlin and Family

We wanted to talk about the humanity of it and what happened to us as people when the war started – the reasons we found inside ourselves and our families and our communities to keep on going. It is ultimately about hope.

Kateryna Vyshnevska Film UA

< death in a time of war but also life and the people who live against the backdrop of conflict.

“They stayed with their children and their animals and stayed to do the work that still needs to be done. But the lives of these people are not just all drama,” she says. “There is a place for love, everyday things, minor conflicts, humour and a lot of space for hope that everything will be fine.”

The stories that make up the series include one about Eurovision superstar Verka Serduchka, who stayed alone in the very centre of Kyiv and live-streamed online almost every day. Another is about a friend of Lodkina who had to take shelter with her two children, her husband and her ex-husband.

“I offered a set of stories to the directors and they either chose something from the list or offered their own story,” Lodkina says. “As a result, three directors wrote the stories on their own, and in those cases our showrunning and production intervention was minimal. Our goal was to give them creative freedom to maximise the realisation of their voice. I wrote two stories myself and co-wrote one more. These stories were adapted into films by directors with whom I really wanted to work.”

But while the scripts were being written, Eliseeva wondered whether it would even be possible to produce the series amid the constant stream of attacks on the Ukrainian capital. “There was a lot of stress and responsibility because we had a time limit, budget limit and human resources limit and a huge production plan,” she says.

“We had six teams, shooting in two stages, so it was very stressful. I don’t know how we managed really – almost 400 people were involved in the project overall – but we did it.”

Early on in development, there were also discussions about filming Those Who Stayed in Ukraine’s southern neighbour, Moldova. But ultimately, it was important to make the series as authentic as possible. Shooting in Kyiv was the only option, but that threw up numerous logistical questions about just how the series might be shot.

Permission had to be sought from the Ukrainian military and the Kyiv city administration, while every filming location needed to be close to a bomb shelter in the event the city’s air raid sirens would begin suddenly.

“It gave us a lot of challenges to find the places we wanted, but we had four location managers –they’re the best in Kyiv – and we got everything we wanted,” Eliseeva says. “The exception was filming underground. In the case of attacks, people go underground, so we couldn’t shoot there.” challenging episode was In the Zoo, which was filmed at the XII Months zoo 30 kilometres north of Kyiv. production team wanted

Artem Lytvinenko (The Sniffer) wrote and directed the episode, which follows what happens when the zoo is cut off from the outside world by Russian troops, putting the animals and workers in grave danger.

The timing of the shoot was particularly important, as the production team wanted to mirror the weather conditions from the time of the real stories. Had they missed their mark, filming would have been delayed by a full year. “But you can’t do that because this story is really topical, it has to be told now,” Vyshnevska says.

Lodkina picks up: “We were filming in Kyiv, far from the actual war zone, but there were enough challenges, working around wartime restrictions and the curfew. What if the electricity is cut off? What if there are missile attacks during the filming? What if the Russian army starts an offensive on Kyiv from Belarus? What if no one in the world is interested in our series and our stories?

“But we did it. We filmed the series, even though during one of the shooting days the whole group had to sit in a bomb shelter.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most

“When Anastasiia told me the format, I thought it was a good idea because I didn’t want to shoot a film about the war now. It’s too early,” Lytvinenko says. “We need time to think about it and reflect on it, and after a few years have passed, then we can film about the war. But stories of those who have stayed here are interesting, and I connected with guys from the zoo who told me about how they tried to save the monkeys. It was very relatable and emotional.”

Condensing the story into a 30-minute episode presented a challenge even before filming began on location at the zoo, where one worker who had been there during the real occupation was on hand to guide the production and facilitate their work with the animals, including Archie the Rhino and Lyosha the Camel.

“Once, when we finished shooting in the middle of the night, we had to stay in the zoo until the morning,” Lytvinenko says of the curfew rules. “But it wasn’t a big problem. More of a problem was that I wanted to shoot the Dnieper River. The dam was destroyed and it looks scary and really dramatic, but the military said we couldn’t shoot there because there might be bombs in the water or the lowlands.”

Meanwhile, writer Tala Prystaetska (Love in Chains) made her directorial debut with Moms. Inspired by a real couple she knew, the story introduces a young boy and his two mothers, who must decide what to do once the invasion starts but struggle to answer their son’s questions about the attack.

“All children can feel calm and safe when the adults have answers about what to do. But when the war started, we didn’t have those answers,” she says. “We only had doubts and a lot of fear. As a mother, I can say that you need to stay calm, but you know nothing, about your future or even the next few minutes. You only hear the noise of drones and helicopters, and you don’t know if it’s your last minute with your child or you have the chance to live.”

Filming during a war, Prystaetska says, is “the greatest of challenges.”

In the Zoo brought the added complication of working with real animals