
In The Rearview 2023
Distributed by Film Movement
Produced by Piotr Grawender and Maciek Hamela
Directed by Maciek Hamela
Streaming, 84 mins
Middle School - General Adult
Refugees; Ukraine; War
Date Entered: 01/24/2025
Reviewed by Terri Robar, Communication, Media, Geography & Maps Librarian, University of MiamiIn 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Many civilians chose to leave the country for safety. Their problem was how to reach the border. Many had no cars, and public transit was often unavailable. A network of people with cars began to offer rides, some for pay and some for free. The filmmaker, Maciek Hamela, began working as a volunteer driver and used these trips to film the stories of his passengers.
This film does a brilliant job of turning the anonymous Ukrainian refugees of the evening news into real people living in a surreal situation. At first glance, they seem to be perfectly normal families. But, bit by bit, you get a glimpse behind that brave façade. One woman, for instance, was admiring a fiery sunset but then said that it reminded her of the glow of a burning house in the distance.
We are also shown some of the areas that they pass through. There are bombed out buildings, cars, and tanks. There are checkpoints as well as barricades on the roads so that cars have to slow down to weave around them. On some trips, they have to take a detour because a road has been mined or a bridge is gone.
The film is rather long, running almost an hour and a half; yet I felt surprised at how quickly the time passed. There was something about these stories that was so spellbinding that they just held my attention. Not all of it was easy to listen to but it did generate a lot of empathy for what the people of Ukraine have endured.
Almost the entire dialogue is in Ukrainian, so English speakers have to rely on the subtitles which worked very well. Most of the film was shot inside the car showing the passengers but there is a good mix with views outside the car, so it doesn’t get monotonous. Although it was filmed in a war zone, you see only the aftermath of battles, so the film is suitable for children as young as middle school. If you want to understand what it is like to have your life turned upside down by the sudden onslaught of war, then I highly recommend this film.
Awards: Grand Jury Award, Sheffield International Documentary Festival; Silver Hugo, Best Documentary, Chicago International Film Festival; Grand Prix, Bilbao International Festival of Documentary Films; Political Film Award, Hamburg Film Festival; Golden Eye, Zurich Film Festival
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