It’s almost been two years already since Vladimir Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine! Already 22 months of war! A war that has long since gone beyond the first projections, and whose scars will remain etched for decades to come. With over 7 million refugees and 8 million internally displaced people, one of the major phenomena of the first months of this war was the large-scale evacuation of civilians. This is what this raw and moving documentary, presented at the Cannes Film Festival, bears witness to: a courageous road-movie with a simple car-camera set-up, a convoy-documentary bringing together action and words.

Aboard his overloaded minivan, Polish director Maciek Hamela travels the roads of Ukraine during the first weeks of the war to help the residents to flee. The driver-director makes his way through minefields to evacuate a neighboring population forced to leave. His vehicle then becomes their first safe and intimate confessional space, a zone of trust and confidences for a mosaic of passengers. As the emotion flows through the cabin, he films their conversations. Their stories do not all have the same emotional impact, but he makes them all heard by capturing their sincerity, spontaneity and talkativeness. Exchanges, confessions, tears and sometimes laughter follow one another under the eye of a camera that almost disappears in this safe haven taking them to safety.

Each story is often told for the first time between people who don’t know each other, so it’s also a story of encounters that shape a larger narrative, that of the transition from the past to the future. Indeed, it is in this minivan that these Ukrainians become refugees. It’s a big leap into the unknown, echoing scenes of reunion and separation that everyone accepts in their own way, even to the point of looking forward to the journey! In such a tale of exodus, the children’s testimony takes center stage, as they openly speak out without any filter of fear or mistrust.

And it is through their faces and behavior that the full extent of what they have been through is reflected, as the French title suggests (literally “Rock, Paper, Gun”), referring to the deep-rootedness of the war in their upbringing. The film covers the different stages of the war, from the first wave of refugees to the siege of the cities of Kiev and Chernihiv, followed by the battles of Kharkiv and Mariupol. But while it is ever-present in the speeches, the war remains off-screen, visible only through the windows of the minivan, where we can see the aftermath, from destroyed buildings to cut-off roads, regular check-points and the scorched wrecks of tanks. Through these windows, the scenery of the war unfolds like a backdrop to the conversations he captures. He takes us through the horrors of war on the move and the tragedy of the exodus behind closed doors, filming the war after the fact.

This odyssey of transition between their past and their future creates two temporalities, depicted in this almost 100% behind-closed-doors film by two single shots: one looking towards the front of the vehicle, towards what they are travelling through and leaving, and ultimately towards what awaits them, their future; and the other towards the rear seats and the war stories, as in the original & English title. The director is at once driver, organizer, volunteer, interpreter and confidant. Always looking for solutions, he is discreet but not neutral, and makes no comment. This is not an analytical piece, it’s a journey into the heat of the action.

A powerful war story full of humanity, “In the Rearview” is an engaging, moving and important multilingual documentary (Ukrainian, English, French, Polish). This emergency tale echoes a spontaneous and massive mobilization, and the historic bonding of two countries with a painful shared past… a sign of fraternity between (neighboring?) peoples!

Raphaël Sallenave