behind closed doors filmed in a mini-van under bombs

THE “WORLD”’S OPINION – MUST SEE

First feature-length documentary by Maciek Hamela, a Polish director trained in cinema in France, stone leaf gun grasps the disaster of the war in Ukraine, by inventing an essential ambulatory device which combines a commitment to public utility and an original artistic gesture. We could describe the said device as “Iranian”, as the auteur cinema of this country, starting with that of the late genius Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016), has experienced and loved it.

The thing is as simple as pie: an eight-seater minivan, a camera placed on the dashboard filming the people who get in it. So much for the device, deliberately summary but constantly renewed, the story and its great ax taking care of writing the dramaturgy of the film.

Or hordes of refugees taken by surprise by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the first days of the war, some of whom, fleeing the bombings and the advance of the troops, climbed into Maciek’s vehicle to seek shelter further west, in Ukraine, in Poland, further still.

Deep dismay

Getting into this minivan is, probably, one of the first moments they are given to be able to rest for a few moments, between the feeling of having lost everything from one day to the next and the hope of finding a haven where, more or less less temporarily, they will try to reorganize their lives.

What emerges are raw scenes of stripping, capturing the trivial expression of deep dismay, of brief comfort, of dull anguish, of immense fatigue, without the concern for the camera taking over one bit. second. A little girl, holder of the absolute privilege of childhood, even joyfully renamed a game that all the children of the world play, and from which the film borrows its title.

In this mobile camera, made up of numerous sketches with characters who change all the time, the driver has an economic dialogue with the passengers, while the van crosses the uncertainty of a war landscape, dotted with ruins and roadblocks, braving fear and slush, advancing at the jerky pace, modest but vital, of a solidarity that does not disappoint. Seven million Ukrainians have been driven from their homes since the start of the war.