Still: Shelter - Sjors Swierstra & Ivanna Khitsinska

Sjors Swierstra freely admits that he, like most of us, had never experienced living in a war zone. He followed news of the war in Ukraine since the invasion of February 2022 and (once again like most of us) experienced that feeling of overload, of punch-drunkenness, whereby our sense of empathy diminishes over time, despite the injustices we are watching on our television screens.

But, unlike most of us, Swierstra acted on an impulse. “For the people in Ukraine, the intensity is still there. We cannot afford to lose sight of this. And when I'm getting numb, I have to try harder to feel something and to keep the same levels of compassion of empathy going on.”

Yes, the news portrays the war in terms of battle, and in power shifts and discomforting diplomacy, but Swierstra was determined to record the war as experienced by the everyday folk who have to descend into basements and metro stations to seek relief from Putin’s bombs. 

The VR Shelter records the story of these people and offers viewers a precious, at times visceral, insight into life during wartime. “You hardly see normal life, the life in-between the big news stories. And that's really what we try to capture, people trying to live under these extremely difficult circumstances. I think it's very important to keep their story on the emotional agenda as well.”

The VR replicates the senses of claustrophobia within the shelter, but also the moments of beauty, such as when a symphony orchestra practises in the basement of the Kharkiv opera. And birth as well, as witnessed in the basement of a hospital. “I have two kids, so I know about the tension that's involved during birth,” says the director. “But imagine being a Ukrainian woman giving birth to your child in the basement of a Kyiv hospital because the air raid alarms go off and you have to shelter. Imagine being there without your partner, because he’s fighting for your country. We filmed two scenes in the hospital shelter that are so touching to see, because they’re so small, so tender and so kind. They’re moments of humanity amidst so much pain and destruction.”

Swierstra describes the set-up for audiences of the VR.

“You go in as individuals, there's room for six people to experience the film, but the composition of the chairs really mimics some of the shots in the shelters that we filmed in Ukraine. So people are sitting a bit too close to each other, it's a bit uncomfortable. And when the film is finished, you have to wait for a green light to switch on before you can get out. After you take the goggles off, there's some time to let it sink in what you've experienced, maybe to talk about it or just to share a moment of silence with other people…it's a collective moment, a moment of reflection.”

Shelter received support from the Netherlands Film Fund who, like director Swierstra and producer Justin Karten of Scopic Labs, were determined that it should be a totally Dutch/Ukrainian venture. “We realized that a project like this brings huge ethical dilemmas and pitfalls with it. Of course you have the problem of voyeurism, sensationalism, exploitation. Basically there is the question of whether as a creator, you have the right to appropriate the suffering of others,” the director says. 

“You are probably aware of the work of Renzo Martens [Dutch director] whose Enjoy Poverty was a film that's really rooted in my consciousness. So what I asked myself and what we also discussed with the Film Fund was ‘how can we prevent the pitfalls Martens addresses? We don’t want to fly into a country, film the drama and then take the film to our country, get paid and gain the cultural capital?’ So I was like, yeah, we should really make this into an equal collaboration between Ukraine and the Netherlands.”

Which was why the crew are mainly Ukrainian and why Ivanna Khitsinska, who initially came on board as a producer became core to the whole thing. “She helped with setting up the production. So she got us in touch with a team of researchers, a DOP and a sound recorder, but at some point she started sharing more of her own experiences from the shelters which was vital for our understanding. And later on in the process she also started working as a director. Then she went to some of the very dangerous places close to the frontline on her own, just with a camera, and she did some beautiful interviews there and some amazing shots. She really earned the co-director credit.”

Swierstra’s background is more in regular docmaking, so Shelter marks a departure for him in terms of his editorial and cinematic approach to the subject. “The edit process was really interesting because you really have to embrace the immersive storytelling and let the audience have the time and space to explore the world that you present to them,” he says.

“What we did was try to weave a narrative more like a poem where it's not one story, but a story in fragments. So it's open, it's associative, there are many layers, and what we really try to do is to present life in war in its full complexity. So there's cruelty, there's suffering, there's boredom, there's tenderness, there's beauty, there's resilience. That's what we wanted to showcase. Because for me, these are really moments of shared humanity and we wanted to present it to the audience and invite them to look around to really feel something of what the Ukrainian people are experiencing every day.”

South by Southwest is running from March 7 to 15, click here for the Dutch line-up.