In 1982, a wordless documentary by Godfrey Reggio, featuring music by Philip Glass, took the world by storm. Over 40 years later, it’s still not forgotten – certainly not by Ukrainian director Dmytro Hreshko, now behind “Divia.”
“When I first met Dmytro, what struck me was the sincerity and purity in his approach to documentary filmmaking: no pretentiousness, just raw observation and honest intent. I asked him: ‘Do you want to make this film Hollywood-style?’ He replied: ‘No, I’ll do it the ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ way,” says producer Glib Lukianets.
Hreshko adds: “It wasn’t just ‘Koyaanisqachi.’”
“It was ‘Baraka’ [by Ron Fricke], ‘Workingman’s Death’ by Michael Glawogger, Jóhann Jóhannsson’s ‘Last and First Man.’ Their approach touched me, and then I saw ‘Berg’ by Joke Olthaar. At first, all you notice are these great mountain shots. They look great, but after a while, you start to think: ‘What does it mean?!’ It’s not fast-paced cinema, but I found this experience to be very interactive.”
In “Divia,” competing in the Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s Crystal Globe Competition, he shows the destruction that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But also, the ongoing threat faced by the entire Earth.
“All this silence hopefully makes the film more universal. This way, there’s more space for interpretation. It just felt right,” he states.
Produced by Gogol Film and UP UA Studio, and co-produced by Valk Productions, it was made with the support of the Polish Film Institute.
Speaking to Variety from Ukraine’s Uzhgorod, Hreshko stresses: “We were trying to make sure it’s not boring. These experimental, slower films can get tiring; we wanted to take people, and by that I also mean the regular viewers, on a journey they would actually want to follow until the end. It’s a meditation.”
One that was made much easier by Grammy-winning composer Sam Slater, who also joined the team.
“He tuned himself to the vibrations of the landscape: the dust of the ground, the wind, the grief in the air. Sitting together in his studio, we would say: ‘Here, we need Sartre’s ‘Nausea’ and there, the triumph of nature, quietly covering the corpses of Russian soldiers with grass,” recalls Lukianets.
Slater, who’s worked on “Joker” and “Chernobyl,” is also behind the score for harrowing “2000 Meters to Andriivka.”
Hreshko adds: “Sam’s last album, ‘I Do Not Wish to Be Known as a Vandal,’ matched the idea of ‘Divia’ perfectly. It has a song called ‘Kintsugi’ after the Japanese art of mending broken things with a lacquer mixed with powdered gold. In the film, nature is broken, too. It will try to recover, but it will be very different from what it was prior to the destruction.”
To recreate the world before the aggression, the team looked for footage depicting Ukrainian nature in all its glory all over the country, also to show “what’s at risk of being destroyed in the future,” he says.
“We’re not just talking about the East or the South – it’s everything we have. We started developing this idea before the full-scale invasion. At first, it had more to do with how humans, and industrialization, have impacted Ukrainian nature. Later, we had to focus on war.”
But he couldn’t allow himself to be impacted by burnt forests, animal corpses and destroyed fields he shows in the film.
“I guess it’s the same for all Ukrainian directors: we can’t afford to reflect too much on all this destruction and tragedy. We’ve built this emotional shield, and we will keep it up until the end of this war. If we would start thinking too much, we would get too emotional and lose control. Each week, bombs keep falling on Kyiv. You see all these houses, including my own, completely destroyed. People grieve in these ruins. I am not immune to this sadness, but this job and this camera give me some distance. They make it easier.”
Talking about the ongoing war, not just the films, is a “cultural mission” for any Ukrainian artist, he says. Even as the industry, or people abroad, grow increasingly indifferent.
“All I can say is thank you. Thank you to all the people supporting Ukraine. I can’t really say: ‘We need more support.’ I understand it’s hard to keep thinking about something that’s happening far away from your home,” he admits. But it’s hard not to feel frustrated at times.
“At first, I wanted to show nature slowly recovering – just like we were recovering, hoping the war will end. Now, we feel it will continue forever. The war comes closer and closer again – threatening everything in this vicious circle.”
Producer Polina Herman notes: “Divia’ is our third film with Dmytro, and a particularly important project – for us, our country and for the world at large. It aims to draw everyone’s attention to what’s happening today. If we don’t stop the wars and the destruction of nature, we may truly have to look for ways to migrate to other planets. But even if that ever becomes possible, we all know that we can’t escape from ourselves.”
“Divia”