To Belgian director Pieter-Jan De Pue, fewer commodities are as precious to a creative as time. The photographer spent seven years in Afghanistan to tell the story of children digging up Soviet mines in the high mountains of Pamir for his 2016 Sundance award-winning “The Land of the Enlightened.” The decade since has seen the filmmaker spend most of his time in Ukraine, where he closely chronicled the lives of six young people in the region for his CPH:DOX opener “Mariinka.”
Shot on 16mm over nine years, “Mariinka” begins before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In the titular Donbas region, De Pue meets two brothers separated by war, one fighting for Russia, the other for Ukraine. They have two other siblings, one paralysed by a combat injury, and the youngest of the clan, living in the United States after being adopted at an early age. Originally titled “Four Brothers,” “Mariinka” evolved to encompass the story of a promising boxing talent turned paramedic, and a clever smuggler who contrabands unexpected goods across the frontline to survive. Watch an exclusive trailer below:
Speaking with Variety ahead of the Danish festival, De Pue says the origins of the project can be traced back to his time in Afghanistan. In 2014, a Ukrainian member of his crew was called to the frontlines by his national army. What was originally a lateral storyline in “The Land of the Enlightened” evolved to De Pue travelling to Ukraine to chronicle the escalating tensions.
“I had started working as a photographer for the International Red Cross and was suddenly in controlled territory in Ukraine,” he recalls. “When I was taking pictures, I met one of the four brothers you see in the film, Ruslan, who was fighting for the separatist army.”
De Pue became fascinated by the story of the brothers. After months of shooting both in Ukraine and the U.S., the director put together a few clips and managed to get most of his financing and producing partners for “The Land of the Enlightened” on board for his sophomore effort. Things, of course, took a sharp turn with the full-scale invasion that kick-started a war that still rages on today.
“After the full-scale invasion, we discovered this story was going beyond the four brothers,” adds De Pue. This change spoke to a general need for flexibility that was essential to the success of the project. The director had a minimal crew and learned to speak Russian so he could earn the trust of his subjects and the local community.
“At some point, I was living more in Ukraine than Belgium, especially before the full-scale invasion,” he notes. “I was earning the trust of the characters and trying to understand what Mariinka was all about. Between 2016 and 2024, I spent between six and eight months a year in Ukraine. That’s the reason we got so close to the characters. We could establish that relation of trust, and that was absolutely necessary to make the film.”
The director emphasizes how “war dictated our shooting schedule.” “We needed to be very few people with a car, and adapt to the circumstances because war was telling us how we should work. Maybe one day you could film, but the next day you couldn’t.”
Asked whether he felt pressured by his partners to wrap the film, especially given the timeliness of the full-scale invasion, De Pue says “there was a lot of pressure from the producers to wrap the story as soon as possible but, at the same time, they also understood that a very interesting aspect of the film was seeing the characters evolving over a decade. It was a permanent negotiation, asking for more time, but also showing new materials we brought from Ukraine and trying to convince them about the new approach we were trying to bring into place.”
By the end of 2024, however, the filmmaker felt they had enough footage. A year later, De Pue took the project to CPH:DOX’s Roughcut platform, six years after winning the festival’s Eurimages Development Award in 2019. It felt natural, then, to bring the finished film back to the festival that supported it for so many years.
“It was a long negotiation with different festivals, but CPH:DOX has always been a very reliable partner,” says De Pue. “The team was always extremely enthusiastic about our film, so when they offered the opening film [slot], we also agreed out of respect and to be collegial. It was obvious we should give them the world premiere after everything they did for the film.”
“Mariinka” is produced by Bart Van Langendonck and De Pue at Savage Film, in co-production with Christian Beetz of Beetz Brothers Film Production, Femke Wolting and Bruno Felix of Submarine, Vincent Metzinger, Emilie Blézat of Dark Riviera, Naoko Films, Shelter Prod. and ZDF in collaboration with ARTE, with the participation of RTBF Documentary Unit, VRT, VPRO and SVT.
It is supported by the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF), the Belgian Federal Tax Shelter, the Netherlands Film Fund, the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme, the King Baudouin Foundation and Eurimages, in collaboration with the Belgian Embassy in Ukraine.
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