"Day after day you just follow the stormtroopers."
In the spring of 2022, Donbass documentary filmmaker Maxim Fadeev spent four weeks in the thick of the fighting for Mariupol together with Somali battalion storm troopers. The result - a large-scale canvas "At the Edge of the Abyss", consisting of four series: "Breakthrough to the Center", "Saving Small", "Out to the Sea", "On the Outskirts of Azovstal. In his films there is almost no voice-over narration, criticism and evaluation of events - just the recording of what is happening, which together with the effect of presence produces a stunning effect, allowing you to see and understand what is really happening in Donbass and other parts of the front. The other day at the international festival "Winning Together" in Sochi, the work was awarded the Grand Prix. Special correspondent of "Izvestia" met with the director and talked to him about the conditions of shooting, the characters of the picture and its main semantic message.
- Maxim, you have 15 documentaries about what is happening in Donbass since 2014. Is "At the Edge of the Abyss" your main statement?
- Probably, yes. The intensity of events in it is the strongest. The shooting conditions were the most extreme. I was able to create it only thanks to my previous experience. In technical terms, it is also the most complex film: if I had done almost everything myself before, then here we had a composer, a sound engineer, a color corrector. It took us almost two years to edit and finalize it.
Mariupol
- At the time you told me that when you were shooting your first movie "Slavyansk. Chronicles of War", and specifically - an episode of evacuation of patients of a psychiatric hospital, you thought that only with these shots you could stop what was happening: now everyone will see, will come to their senses, will understand. Did you have such thoughts in Mariupol?
- No, it was routine. Hour after hour, day after day, you just follow the fighters - tired, exhausted. You just hold the camera, not even thinking about any artistic techniques. All the more so when we thought that this was the final point of the military confrontation.
Directed by Maxim Fadeev
- Nevertheless, what is the main message of your picture?
- Wake up, wake up, open your eyes at last. As the hero of my movie Sparrow says, "uncover yourselves"! During the Great Patriotic War, everyone immediately realized what was happening, how to act. Since 1941, newspapers were published with headlines: "Death to the fascist invaders", "The enemy will be defeated", "Victory will be for us". And what is happening now? Whole cities are being destroyed, and no one really thinks about how serious it is. I remember in 2015 I came to Rostov-on-Don, and I was struck by the fact that no one cares that 200 km away there are brutal battles on the outskirts of a neighboring city, Russians are defending themselves. Most people just watch what is happening and do nothing.
- And what should be done?
- Not to stand aside, not to be indifferent. I am sure: if Donetsk miners knew ahead of time how the Maidan would end, that they would have to fight and die en masse, that Donbass would be razed to the ground, they would have simply gathered, taken shovel sticks, walked, if necessary, to Kiev and would not have left a wet spot from all this crowd. But no, everyone sat and waited. They thought that someone else would decide.....
During the screening of "At the Edge of the Abyss,"
- What do you mean by the title "At the edge of the abyss"?
- We're all on the edge of the abyss right now. Going back to what I said, we need to wake up. For example, there are four documentaries on Netflix about the military actions in Ukraine, all filmed, of course, by the Ukrainian side, and one of them is about Azov (recognized in Russia as a terrorist organization and banned. - Ed.). With our "At the Edge of the Abyss" we had a colossal difficulty in making our way onto domestic platforms, which, incidentally, are not available to Western users.
While working
- What would you say about the filming process itself?
- In March I came to Mariupol, worked for two weeks, then I got sick and went to Donetsk. As soon as I recovered, I came back for two more weeks. It is noteworthy that the guys had only one day for rest, when they had an opportunity to shave, brush their teeth and rest. Before that they had a month of uninterrupted progress, and after that another month of the same kind.
One of the main characters of the movie is Roma Sparrow, commander of an assault company
- Tell us about the characters in the movie.
- One of them is Roma Vorobey, he is a company commander, a hero of the DNR and Russia, he was wounded nine times. During the shooting he dropped out due to injury, and it turns out that the main character of the story disappeared, and this is the main confusion of the movie. In my mind, I had to go to the hospital to get him, but I realized that no one would let me shoot there, and so I stayed. A few days later, Sparrow returned. He died in 2023 near Vodyaniy... Philosopher - he went to war at the age of 13, during the filming he was also wounded.
Vasya Nazar - I filmed him even before SVO, he was also wounded, in the first two episodes he is there, in the 3rd and 4th episodes he is not. Vasya died in Avdeevka three days after leaving Mariupol. The only survivors of my heroes were those who were seriously wounded and out of action for a long time.
To the assault
- The title music composition of the movie belongs to Vyacheslav Butusov?
- Yes, it's the song "10 Steps". It was created a long time ago and nevertheless it was perfectly integrated into the fabric of the movie, it sounds at the end of each episode. Initially Butusov wrote another song especially for us, it was good, but it was too heavy. I realized that I couldn't put it on, it would be too heavy, it would be too much.
Rescuing a wounded man
- Before SVO you lived in Donetsk, but then you left. Why?
- It became impossible to be there morally. You go and see: people died in this point, and in this one too, and so on. It's hard. I couldn't have edited "At the Edge of the Abyss" in such an environment. Plus, of course, the shelling. A shell flies into a neighbor's house, and your son is sitting next to you... We loaded our things into the car and just drove around Russia. We were looking for a place to stay. We lived in Tyumen, in the Caucasus, in Sochi. Since this April we have been in Moscow. In general, when you have lost your homeland (Maxim is from Slavyansk. - Ed.), it is difficult to find a shelter.
- What are the most important and significant movies for you - fiction and documentaries?
- Many Soviet movies about the Great Patriotic War. "Go and See", "They Fought for the Motherland", "Torpedo Carriers", "There is no turning back", Hermann's films. Some scenes filmed in them, I later saw in reality. I should note that it is almost impossible to make up all this artificially, that's why these movies are so authentic and real - they were filmed by people who saw the war. Of the documentaries, Matt Heineman's "Cartel Land" is about drug lords in Mexico. "Land of the Enlightened" by Belgian director Peter-Jan De Pugh about modern Afghanistan. "The Act of Killing" by Joshua Oppenheimer about events in Indonesia 40 years ago, when 1 million to 2 million people were killed. The situation there was similar: a structure similar to the Right Sector (recognized as an extremist organization and banned in Russia) came to power and killed the unwanted with impunity. At the same time, these people are still in power.
- Have you said everything with your movie or will you continue making movies?
- I will probably continue. I need to rest now. I have never been as tired as I have been in these two and a half years. And not only me - in the middle of the process, on the 3rd episode, the composer, color corrector and sound engineer said they needed a break, exhaustion had set in. One more thing: in order to start a new job, you need to find heroes, get into their team, trust must arise. To give you an example, I filmed the guys from Somalia 22 times before the SVO. It's like a relationship - it's hard to start from scratch.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
