AUTHORED DOCUMENTARY
Filmmaker Lambert with special forces leader Hummer on front line mortar mission near Kherson, firing on Russian trenches
the significant cost of a high-risk adviser, obligatory for anyone shooting in the Ukraine for the BBC.
The other essential was an open mind. “For all the films I’ve looked back on with a hint of pride, I’ve gone out with one idea, but there’s the flexibility and confidence from the commissioning level and down to completely change tack if that story isn’t working, or if we find something better, to effectively junk the development and start a new project on the ground.”
CHANGE OF PLAN
They decided he should go to Mykolaiv in Southern Ukraine, which Lambert describes as, “sitting on a fault-line between Ukrainian territory and Russian territory, with the neighbouring (then occupied) city of Kherson in everyone’s sights.” Before leaving, they’d approached the governor of Mykolaiv and local celebrity Vitaliy Kim, with a view to following his story.
Sure enough, the plan entirely changed. “I fell in with two groups of people,” says Lambert. “If
I could secure meaningful access, what these people were doing would be interesting as an internal narrative and shed a light on a bigger picture. Two story lines that could combine and speak to each other in an interesting way.”
Kim was a reluctant subject, but he did take Lambert to the first group of people. “One day he did an amazing thing. He said, ‘if you want to go to the front line, there’s something you really need to see, get in the car’.” He drove Lambert to a secret intelligence centre, staffed by people from all walks of life - teachers and architects turned soldiers. “It was the first moment when the film got an electric charge. At a precinct level, it was all happening, playing out in front of the lens, there were some good characters doing crazy shit.
“That was the moment I called Tom in a fit
of amazement, thinking this is extraordinary - not fabricated - something going on that I’ve not experienced before when I’ve been covering conflicts. This feels new. But I didn’t trust my judgement.”
“You were worried that it wasn’t enough,” says Dixon-Spain. “There was some concern that
Winter 2022
televisual.com 145
OLLY LAMBERT FILMMAKER
“There were a couple of
times on the shoot when I checked in with Tom: ‘this feels good, but does it
work? I’m not going to bring you a lot of rushes and you say what on earth?’”
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