Kherson Journalist Anzhela Slobodian Unveils Truth in 'Invasion' Film

Anzhela Slobodian is a Kherson-based journalist who survived Russian capture and became the voice of truth about the occupation of her native land. "The Invasion is a documentary about the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the occupation of the Kherson region. The film tells the story of a family from the Kherson region who suffered a heavy loss at the beginning of the occupation. In an exclusive interview, we talk to the author about the movie and the events that took place around it.

When did you realize that all the events that you managed to record during the occupation of the Kherson region should be realized as a movie?

Initially, I had the idea to create an extended report from the footage I shot during the occupation. At that time, the script looked like a diary. However, I realized that it was not ready for publication yet. Later, I decided to create a social drama with a story of lost love. The film was made with the support of a grant from Deutsche Welle.

Why did you choose the story of Kateryna's family, and how did you meet the main characters?

During the occupation, I worked as a journalist and made materials related to the war. On February 26, 2022, the occupiers blew up an ambulance, and I made an informational piece. After this story, the wife of the deceased patient who was in the ambulance contacted me and asked me to find out if Leonid had really died. To find out the truth, I had to talk to the paramedic who survived the shelling.

The paramedic was in a hospital controlled by the Russians. How did you manage to get there?

The ambulance medics helped us. They provided a paramedic's uniform, a mask and glasses. A representative of the medical institution told the doctors that I was making a statement to the ambulance because they needed to report on the injured paramedic. While he was distracting me, I was recording Andriy's (the paramedic) comments on my phone.

When I had the evidence, I wrote to Kateryna to tell her that, unfortunately, Leonid was dead. There was no chance of saving him. Despite my arguments, Kateryna refused to believe that her husband had died. We corresponded for quite some time, and she sent me letters that she had written to Leonid. After I left the occupation, I decided to introduce Andrii and Kateryna to each other so that the paramedic could tell the woman personally what happened that day.

This family had everything, they had gotten married just a month before the tragedy, they were happy. But in one day, all their dreams were destroyed. The film Invasion is about love and its wounds, about the feelings of people who find themselves in despair, about the losses that people still cannot believe. The film is freely available on the YouTube channel Okolo TV.

It is usually difficult for people who have been victims of Russian aggression to open up to the camera. How was it in this case ?

I have been working as a journalist for quite a long time, I love people, I like to talk about them. The documentary is the first attempt to tell such a complicated story. When a person is under occupation, they become afraid to testify. It happened this time too, but I assured them that my task was not to harm security. During the occupation, I could not use everything they said. I saved what I thought was important for later. They trusted me. The main thing was to let them tell me what was in their hearts.

The film is based on your archival materials. How did you manage to film the crimes of the Russian Federation? How dangerous was it?

Safety is the most important thing for a journalist. But my case is different. It was my own choice to stay in Kherson and continue to tell about what was happening. After the occupation, I was unable to leave. My colleagues told me that my name was on the list of journalists hunted by the occupiers. I decided to remain an active journalist. I made live broadcasts, passed on information to my colleagues. My husband helped me a lot. We developed our own methodology - he went ahead, and I stayed behind, filming with my phone. The people of Kherson also helped.

Even before the full-scale invasion began, I managed to take some equipment out of the office. I had an editorial laptop on which I was editing. We also used video recorders in the car. I took videos from them and used them in my stories. However, all the equipment was taken away from me when I was captured.

Working on the movie Invasion. Photo provided by the interviewee

How did you manage to save the materials for the movie?

Most of the materials were not saved. I filmed a lot with my husband's phone. He had to destroy everything when we left the occupation. I recovered only a few materials from my own phone. For the film, I used videos that I had previously sent to my colleagues and friends, and added eyewitness footage. It was the interview with the paramedic that I managed to download, so it became the basis for the film.

While I was already making the film, I contacted the ambulance department and asked them to provide me with audio recordings of phone calls. That's how I found the phone conversations of the film's characters with the ambulance.

Earlier you mentioned that this was the first time you created a documentary. Did you seek help from documentary filmmakers?

I saw the story as a reporter, I had a lot of material, and it took me an hour to complete the work. As a journalist, I wanted to tell everything in detail. But this is a documentary with elements of social drama. It had to be a short, concise story. If I hadn't had the help of director Serhiy Masloboishchykov, I wouldn't have been able to tell a story that would have touched the heartstrings of the human soul.

The movie's set. Photo: Oleksandr Maksymenko

How many people worked on the movie?

The video footage was created by my husband and me. Without him, I would not have been able to record the events during the occupation. The second cameraman was Maksym Prudkun. He filmed interviews with the main characters. The director was Serhiy Masloboishchikov. Composer Natalia Maksymenko worked on the exclusive music score. We were also assisted by actress Alla Serhiyko, my younger son Daniil, and producer Svetlana Zinovieva, who filmed the scene with the fingerprints on the glass.

From January 30 to February 9, the Rotterdam Festival of Author's Cinema will take place, featuring a retrospective of Serhiy Masloboishchikov. The Invasion will also participate in it. What do you expect from the event?

Yes, this is a retrospective of Sergei Masloboyshchikov. He has quite a rich filmography, but thirteen films were chosen for the retrospective, and one of them is Invasion. Every time I go to Europe for festivals, conferences, and symposia, I try to convey information about Russia's crimes in Ukraine. The movie is one of the elements of my desire to shout out to the international community. I want to show that Ukrainians need help in fighting this evil, so that it does not spread to the whole world.

Could you tell us more about the concept of the upcoming films Occupation and Soldier?

Actually, I thought they would be ready by the end of 2024. But for some reason this did not happen. I'm currently working on both Occupation and Soldier.

Soldier is a story about a defender of Ukraine, about the war through the eyes of an ordinary soldier. This is my colleague, a cameraman who joined the Armed Forces from the first days of the full-scale invasion.

Working on the movie Soldier. Photo provided by the interviewee

"The movie Occupation is my own story of being under occupation and captivity. It is a first-person narrative, a kind of diary. I wrote down all my thoughts and feelings on my phone. I thought I had lost all the notes I had written, but fortunately, I was able to recover them.

It's important to me because after a while some thoughts are erased from my memory. Perhaps this is how my body tries to get rid of memories that are triggering for me and cause pain. In my opinion, the occupation is the most terrible thing, worse than the shelling. It feels like your life has been taken away from you. When you go outside and see the Z on your sleeve, people in balaclavas driving by, occupiers at checkpoints. When they ask: "How are you doing?", I'm ready to kill them. But you can only show them how much you hate them with your eyes because they can kidnap you, lock you in a basement, and you won't know if you will be able to see your loved one. Even now, when I come to Kherson, I realize that I will not be able to live there anymore. The unknown of what might happen the next day scares me.

Владислава Попенко