Maciek Hamela’s Oscar-shortlisted documentary In the Rearview arrives on video on demand platforms this weekend — a compelling portrait of Ukrainian civilians fleeing for their lives in the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The Polish-born Hamela is both filmmaker and, in a real sense a participant in the documentary even though he is rarely glimpsed on camera. After the brutal attack on Ukraine began, he bought a used van and drove it into Ukraine so he could transport young, old and in-between to safety across the Polish border. Eventually, he set up a camera in the van, which recorded his passengers digesting the utter disruption of their lives in real time.
‘In the Rearview’
Maciek Hamela/Film Movement
“That simple viewpoint, along with roadside scenes of pickups and drop-offs, captures the moments when ordinary life ended and the deadly chaos of the Russian invasion began,” noted the New York Times reviewer Nicolas Rapold on Friday, awarding In the Rearview a Critic’s Pick designation. “[T]he van passes checkpoints, burned-out cars and disemboweled buildings while steering clear of mined roads and bombed bridges. But the van presents a safe space where passengers can talk about who and what they left behind, sleep, or just sit in silence.”
Rapold continued, “[T]he van’s familiar interior has a way of underlining how many other millions across history have had to escape military aggression. Hamela’s work as driver and documentarian reflects that reality while offering a spirit of resilience.”
In the Rearview premiered at Millennium Docs Against Gravity in Poland last year before screening at the Cannes Film Festival’s ACID sidebar. It has won over two dozen prizes around the world, including the Pare Lorentz Award from the International Documentary Association, the Grand Jury Award at Sheffield DocFest in the U.K., Best International Documentary Film at the Zurich Film Festival, Best Film at the Vilnius International Film Festival in Lithuania, and the Prix du public at the War on Screen film festival in France.
‘In the Rearview’: A Ukrainian girl displays a paper with key information about her in case she becomes a casualty of war.
Film Movement
In the film, ordinary people – sudden refugees — begin to process what they’re going through. One woman expresses sorrow for having to abandon a cow named Beauty; a man laments that he had to set his dogs free to fend for themselves. A child displays a piece of paper she keeps with her that lists her name, contact information and other relevant data; if she should be killed in a Russian bombing raid, the paper will help her body be identified.
“I want the audience to see that these people have exactly the same lives as we do,” Hamela told Deadline at the Cannes Film Festival. “It’s their ordinary lives. They have pets, they have cows, they quarrel with their wives. They have kids who want to go for vacation to the sea. And they have to lie to them [because of the war] or promise them things — promises they cannot keep. This happens very often when we see documentaries about atrocities — we get very quickly disassociated from what we’re seeing because it’s too much. We can’t take it anymore. And this is what I wanted to avoid.”
The director chose not to include moments of potential cataclysm.
Director Maciek Hamela at the Deadline Studio at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France on May 22, 2023.
Michael Buckner for Deadline
“We got rid of all the unnecessary drama, like all the difficulties we got into — and we went through hell sometimes going around the frontlines,” he said. “It’s not a film where we want to shock and where we want to inspire fear in the audience or, for example, to underline the bravery of the [Ukrainian] soldiers. It’s really about the deliberately small details, and about how the war is reflected in these details. And, through that, this film can stay with people for many hours and days after they see it.”
Film Movement acquired U.S. rights to the documentary in November 2023. In the Rearview is now available for purchase or rental on major VOD platforms including Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video. “We are proud to bring this intimate, yet powerful and devastating film to U.S. audiences,” Film Movement President Michael Rosenberg noted, “reminding us all of the human perspective of a war which continues to rage.”
Ukraine recently launched a cross-border attack into Russia itself. Meanwhile, Russian forces are reportedly advancing closer to the town of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. U.S. support for Ukraine’s defense – robust and bipartisan at first – has wavered as many Republican members of Congress adopt views on the conflict that could only prompt delight in the Kremlin.
‘In the Rearview’
Film Movement
Hamela sees a parallel between Ukraine’s predicament and what befell his native country in World War II.
“Poland was part of the Allies in the Second World War. It had a treaty with France and England that supposedly protected it against the invasion from Germany. And in the end, it didn’t,” he told Deadline in December. “So, these alliances on paper, they look strong, but in reality, they’re not very effective. But what can be effective is these spontaneous alliances between societies, between people. And this is what happened at the beginning of this invasion. Also, what the film talks about is how people just got spontaneously massively engaged in all the relief efforts.”
The terrain of In the Rearview isn’t the corridors of power where geopolitical decisions are made, but evacuation routes from Ukraine to Poland. Here, men, women and children confront the reality of loss and war’s destruction and find some measure of comfort as a neighbor comes to their aid.